The Woodward Myth
There was a lot of buzz over the weekend about Bob Woodward's piece in which he blamed the president for The Sequester Horror. He was mildly, but seriously, reproved in several quarters for neglecting to point out that the whole spit-and-duct-tape contraption was devised to try and keep the government running despite the best efforts of congressional Republicans to shut the whole thing down and open a tattoo parlor. Ezra Klein was particularly firm-but-fair, pointing out that his "good friend" apparently slept through the 2012 election. But more fascinating to me was the chortling over on the conservative Twitch-O-Sphere to the effect that Bob Woodward, Liberal Hero, had turned on our socialist president, and nyah-nyah, where's your Moses now?
The fact is that, back during the heady days of Watergate, the work that Woodward and Bernstein did was seen only as an act of liberalism only by the various alibi manufacturers and professional paranoids and conspirators to obstruct justice employed by the Nixon Administration. Nobody else paid much attention. (Hardly any other newspapers picked up their most groundbreaking stories and their work didn't materially affect the 1972 presidential campaign at all.) The actual liberal heroes of the time were people like John Sirica, Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and Peter Rodino. Only after these people did their work did Woodward and Bernstein which latter actually was a liberal get lumped into the great lefty conspiracy to bring down Richard Nixon.
This became even more clear in the aftermath. The one abiding effect of Woodward's Watergate work is that it scared the living piss out of the elite political press over the possibility that it might have to "bring down" another criminal president. The late sainted "Katie" Graham was quite explicit, giving a speech in 1988 at CIA Headquarters in which she said, "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." This, of course, was during the reign of George H.W. Bush, who'd been hip-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal under President Ronald Reagan. The Post and its properties determined early on that they weren't going to "bring down" another president or two over what clearly were impeachable offenses. (Ben Bradlee as much as says so in an interview with author Mark Hertsgaard for the latter's On Bended Knee, the definitive account of the dive the elite press took during the Reagan years.) Having done its Watergate thing, the Post slipped comfortably back into its place in the respectable D.C. power structure. Woodward went with it, producing periodically weighty doorstops filled with establishment stenography. He's no more a liberal than he is a member of Motley Crue. He's a courtier to all the right people, the scribe to powerful. He's a journalistic Sadducee. He tends the Temple grounds.
There was a lot of buzz over the weekend about Bob Woodward's piece in which he blamed the president for The Sequester Horror. He was mildly, but seriously, reproved in several quarters for neglecting to point out that the whole spit-and-duct-tape contraption was devised to try and keep the government running despite the best efforts of congressional Republicans to shut the whole thing down and open a tattoo parlor. Ezra Klein was particularly firm-but-fair, pointing out that his "good friend" apparently slept through the 2012 election. But more fascinating to me was the chortling over on the conservative Twitch-O-Sphere to the effect that Bob Woodward, Liberal Hero, had turned on our socialist president, and nyah-nyah, where's your Moses now?
The fact is that, back during the heady days of Watergate, the work that Woodward and Bernstein did was seen only as an act of liberalism only by the various alibi manufacturers and professional paranoids and conspirators to obstruct justice employed by the Nixon Administration. Nobody else paid much attention. (Hardly any other newspapers picked up their most groundbreaking stories and their work didn't materially affect the 1972 presidential campaign at all.) The actual liberal heroes of the time were people like John Sirica, Archibald Cox, Elliot Richardson, and Peter Rodino. Only after these people did their work did Woodward and Bernstein which latter actually was a liberal get lumped into the great lefty conspiracy to bring down Richard Nixon.
This became even more clear in the aftermath. The one abiding effect of Woodward's Watergate work is that it scared the living piss out of the elite political press over the possibility that it might have to "bring down" another criminal president. The late sainted "Katie" Graham was quite explicit, giving a speech in 1988 at CIA Headquarters in which she said, "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." This, of course, was during the reign of George H.W. Bush, who'd been hip-deep in the Iran-Contra scandal under President Ronald Reagan. The Post and its properties determined early on that they weren't going to "bring down" another president or two over what clearly were impeachable offenses. (Ben Bradlee as much as says so in an interview with author Mark Hertsgaard for the latter's On Bended Knee, the definitive account of the dive the elite press took during the Reagan years.) Having done its Watergate thing, the Post slipped comfortably back into its place in the respectable D.C. power structure. Woodward went with it, producing periodically weighty doorstops filled with establishment stenography. He's no more a liberal than he is a member of Motley Crue. He's a courtier to all the right people, the scribe to powerful. He's a journalistic Sadducee. He tends the Temple grounds.
