There may be people in journalism who will be missed more than David Broder, the great political writer for the Washington Post who died today at 81. But off the top of my head I can’t think of any.

Broder was a lovely man and a gentleman (a word that rarely applies to newspapermen). He was a painstaking reporter and, simultaneously in recent years, a columnist, and he did both exceedingly well. He was breathtakingly thorough, wrote with unusual clarity, and won the respect of nearly everyone he dealt with, including me. I never failed to read his reported pieces or his column and always learned from them.