Latter-Day Bob Woodward: A Human Manifestation of Beltway Pecking Orders
Perlstein, in an excellent piece noting that Bob Woodward “is utterly useless in explaining how Washington works. But he is almost uniquely useful as an object lesson in displaying how Washington works—especially its elite punditry division,” has some particularly damning evidence:
He’s something different now: a barometer of Washington conventional wisdom, who more appears to say what he chooses to say based upon his continually evolving sense of who is up and who is down among precisely that same Georgetown cocktail set.
Think that claim is harsh? Here’s an almost scientific case study to prove it. Consider Woodward’s three-volume series of books about George W. Bush’s foreign policy. I reviewed the series in 2006. The first, published in 2002, called Bush At War, was composed back in those heady days when his president’s approval ratings were up above seventy percent. “The George W. Bush who strides across the pages of Bush at War,” I wrote, “was a superhero…. And while the picture of the commander in chief in Plan of Attack (2004)”—modestly subtitled “The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq”—”was rounder, the White House found if flattering enough to put it on the recommended reading list as they prepared for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.”
Call it the middle volume in a Goldilocks series: not too fulsome, not too mean, just something a little bit in between—just right: after all, his presidential approval ratings were hovering all that year right around fifty percent.
Then came 2006, the collapse of the Iraq adventure, and a President down below forty percent in the ratings, roundly derided in all the right circles as a miserable failure. The book Woodward published that year—subtitle: “Bush at War, Part III”—was called State of Denial, and depicted a dangerous idiot. So I did some A/B/C comparisons: Woodward in 2002, 2004, and 2006, characterizing the same subject in completely different ways, correlated in every instance with his declining muscle in Washington.
If it took you until 2006 that Bush and his foreign policy team were a disaster, it’s really time to take that buyout and find another line of work.
Very interesting (as Perlstein tends to be)…thanks for the link!
Two thoughts on Woodward and Perlstein’s portrait of him:
1) It would be interesting to understand how Woodward got this way. After all, his reputation was built by going after a President of the United States who had just won reelection in a landslide, thus makgin Woodward a symbol of a (largely mythic?) good-old-days of American journalism, when reporters conducted serious investigations and were willing to stand up to power in the name of truth.
2) Perlstein’s account of Woodward-on-Bush* is convincing, but is Woodward’s barometer now off…or is his game now somewhat different? I ask because, in fact, Obama’s popularity ratings these days seem steadily over 50% (if only just) and Congress’s are still in the crapper. So Woodward’s blaming Obama for the sequester mess seems like it would have to be the result of something other than simply his being guided by who’s up and who’s down.
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* Typing this phrase made me immediately think of what would potentially be the world’s worst fanfic subgenre. Now I can’t get the image out of my mind. Neither can you.
The minute his reputation was built, he was portrayed on screen by Robert Redford, and apparently started to believe that the image on screen was realistic. Also, he very soon began getting paid a lot. Somehow he never, ever seems to have bought into the shabby-but-doggedly-honest ideal of an ink-stained wretch.
” Perlstein’s account of Woodward-on-Bush* is convincing, but is Woodward’s barometer now off…or is his game now somewhat different? I ask because, in fact, Obama’s popularity ratings these days seem steadily over 50% (if only just) and Congress’s are still in the crapper. So Woodward’s blaming Obama for the sequester mess seems like it would have to be the result of something other than simply his being guided by who’s up and who’s down.”
Or Obama’s ‘up and down’ within the permanent Beltway crowd.
I think this has something to do with militant centrism. The Right has gone far afield, but the Center still defines itself as believing small parts of the Left’s “truth” and small parts of the “Right.” DC is a company town and it helps to stay in the middle
I think this is right, but following more-or-less permanent Beltway Broderism is rather different from following the shifting fortunes of Bush’s popularity, which Perlstein argues dictated the changing tone of Woodward’s W trilogy.
I think it’s right so long as you strike the “militant centrism” part. The Broder-types may be only slightly different than the MTP/Stephanopolous-types, and inform their worldview, but I think Woodward’s more at home with the television consensus than the former group.
that was Bernstein
Bernstein was played by Dustin Hoffman
He never was. He was always a child of the nomenklatura and his entire career was built on access.
It’s important to remember that Woodward started out knowing what to kiss and when in the Navy. It’s a transferable skill, apparently.
I think that this is a large part of it (especially the large paychecks). There is also a tendency for people to get more conservative, both politically and in terms of taking chances, as they age (though some of us manage to buck that trend). I think what afflicts Woodward, and the villagers generally, is that they are very affluent, secure in their jobs, close to and vested in the power structure, and generally older, so there are few repercussions for them from any likely policy shifts. In consequence, it does not matter much to them who wins and politics becomes just a parlor game.
He wouldn’t be the first blind squirrel who, finding a very big nut very early in his career, came to believe that he was a genius.
This Joan Didion piece on Woodward from 1996 strikes me as pretty accurate, too — Woodward great at obtaining interviews and quotes and turns them into “books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent.”
Or “making up quotes” from facts
That Didion piece is one of the best, most incisive critiques I’ve read in years. Thanks for the link.
It’s quite possible for a person to do something really important and useful without necessarily being a moral titan or a far-seeing genius. People tend to class other people in broad categories — Woodward helped bring down Nixon, therefore he’s a “good person” — when actual human nature isn’t quite so simple.
And given Nixon’s active hostility to the media, the press’s pushing back against the Nixon administration was as much an act of self-preservation as it was an act of courage. One of the most dramatic differences between the Nixon White House and its direct descendent the Bush 43 White House was that Bush’s people understood that one got a lot further by presenting the press with tire-swings and bbq (yeah, I know that was McCain, but it’s a great image…and W had pioneered this strategy eight years earlier) than by using the Veep to repeatedly attack it for fun and profit. As Mussolini reportedly said when he politically neutralized one of his most potentially dangerous political rivals Gabriele d’Annunzio by essentially bribing him to stay out of politics, “When you have a rotten tooth you have two possibilities open to you: either you pull the tooth or you fill it with gold.” Nixon was an attempted puller; more recent Republicans often prefer the gold filling technique.
Wouldn’t have guessed that Carl Bernstein would have been the one to age gracefully.
Bernstein’s dad was a civil rights and labor lawyer who fought McCarthyism. Carl’s failings were hedonistic rather than political, so it’s less surprising to me.
If only someone had thrown a key lime pie in Woodward’s face at the right moment . . .
Goddamit, Perlstein’s book on the Reagan years cannot come out soon enough. My mind-grapes need to absorb its juices.
+1
david halberstam’s ‘the powers that be’ goes into woodward & bernstein’s backgrounds. woodward was always quite the establishment man and his role in bringing the watergate story out is probably the exception that proves the rule. i gave up taking woodward seriously enough to read after ‘veil’. his account of william casey’s deathbed ‘interview’ read like 117% bullshit then and i’m sure it still does
‘Veil’ is a puzzling book.
I tend to believe Woodward reported it accurately, but that Casey’s illness caused him to speak and behave in strange ways, none of it very credible for historical purposes.
He made my “can’t believe unless someone else is reporting the same thing” list after the Janet Cooke episode in the very early eighties during his brief run as the Metro editor of the WP. An unbelievable article about a toddler junkie that he approved for publication turned out to be entirely made up after it received a Pulitzer. A reporter without enough of a BS detector to have that story thoroughly checked out is just not to be trusted.
“If it took you until 2006 that Bush and his foreign policy team were a disaster, it’s really time to take that buyout and find another line of work. ”
I don’t think you understand his “line of work” at all. His “line of work” is to generate media revenue by regurgitating the prevailing sentiment. It has nothing to do with divining this irrelevant thing that some people call “an accurate perception of reality.”
ding, ding, ding, ding.
Are you implying that a sellout cannot take a buyout?
The Obama régime is threatening Woodward for reporting something that’s true.
lol
Obama and his minons and croonies are losing on the sequester and losing as well on the facts.
Speaking of losing on the facts . . .
Relax, its Winchester the Pancake-Hating Troll, in another guise.
As always a week behind the facts.
A week late and a donut short is the story of his sad, pathetic life.
I refuse to believe he’s ever short of donuts.
Maybe the more telling thing is the wide-spread outrage over it.
Oh what? We haven’t actually -read- that email? It’s cool if we’re still outraged by something with no proof, as that’s our jobs!
I entertain the notion that Woodward hasn’t changed one bit and that during he was serving certain powerful interests who wanted Nixon out of office. I’m not sure I trust the “official” story of Watergate any more than I trust “official” stories of other events.
I was in my late 20s at the time, and I devoured everything – listened to all the hearings, read all the articles, and read most of the books. President’s Men wasn’t really the story of Watergate as much as it was the story of WaPo’s digging and reporting. Perlstein’s the best on actual history, but what’s been reported is pretty much the story of what happened and how. Why is a question that is so involved in Nixon’s personality, and may never be answered fully.
Certainly Felt’s motives were not the least bit honorable – he was an ultra-right-wing Hoover crony who was trying to embarrass Pat Gray so Nixon would appoint him Director. That this is so does not itself reflect poorly on Woodward, but Woodward’s characterization of Deep Throat as an honorable patriot is very much of a piece with his later work.
You’ll want to Google “Moorer-Radford affair”.
Fuck it, he’s just a huge attention whore. Don’t need to write 1000 words to say that.
How’s that for journalism?
(Not a critique of this post; I think Bob Woodward is just another dumbfuck CW sensible centrist guy.)
Skewered with concision.
Yup. Anyone who took until 2006 to start having a problem with Bush’s foreign policy, there really isn’t any good reason why anyone should pay attention to your musings. Anyone.