At this late stage in Bob Woodward’s profession, it might be doable to publish an entertaining anthology of the damaging critiques of his books. Though there’s an ongoing debate concerning the journalistic deserves of Woodward’s reportorial mode, he has little doubt succeeded in bringing out the vitriolic finest from the likes of Joan Didion, Christopher Hitchens, and Jack Shafer.
A couple of years again, I wrote to Woodward, hoping to get his assist with an article I used to be reporting. I made a decision to solicit him with a thick layer of flattery, in what I believed to be the spirit of Bob Woodward. To my embarrassment, he replied that he struggled to reconcile my fawning missive with the damaging evaluate of his e book State of Denial that I had printed in The New York Occasions in 2006, “which strongly concludes the alternative.” His response means that he is likely to be the perfect editor of the anthology.
Over time, my critique of Woodward has softened significantly. It’s not that the complaints about his works aren’t honest: He does recite his sources’ model of occasions with extreme deference; he trumpets each nugget of reporting, irrespective of how trivial; he narrates scenes with out pausing to situate them in context. However when he’s in his most earnest mode—and Conflict, his new e book about President Joe Biden’s navigation of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Center East, is likely to be probably the most earnest of his profession—he exudes an virtually atavistic obsession with the gritty particulars of overseas coverage. Woodward is probably the most gifted sensationalist of his technology, nevertheless it’s his abiding want to be referred to as a critical individual that yields his most significant reporting.
Conflict will get to that fruitful place, nevertheless it begins in unpromising vogue. Within the prologue, Woodward remembers that Carl Bernstein bumped into Donald Trump at a New York feast, again in 1989. Trump exclaimed, “Wouldn’t it’s wonderful if Woodward & Bernstein interviewed Donald Trump?” The journalistic duo that helped carry down Richard Nixon agreed to see him the subsequent day.
Final yr, Woodward went to a storage facility and commenced rummaging by means of his recordsdata in quest of the misplaced interview. In a field full of outdated newspaper clippings, he discovered a battered envelope containing the transcript. That’s probably the most fascinating a part of the story, alas. Woodward topics his reader to pages of Trump’s banal musings: “I’m a fantastic loyalist. I consider in loyalty to individuals.” As a result of Woodward and Bernstein had been those asking the questions, the dialog is seemingly worthy of historical past. This can be a goofy, tangential begin to a e book dedicated to the overseas coverage of the Biden presidency.
The duvet, which encompasses a row of faces of worldwide leaders, locations Kamala Harris’s visage within the heart. It’s one other piece of misdirection, as a result of the vice chairman is a bit participant within the story. That mentioned, Harris comes off nicely in her cameos. She asks diligent questions within the Scenario Room. In cellphone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she performs the heavy, asking him about civilian casualties in Gaza. There aren’t any cases, nevertheless, of her disagreeing substantively with Biden.
Probably the most revealing Harris second comes towards the top of the e book. Considered one of Biden’s associates asks her, “Might you please speak to the president greater than you speak to him? Your president actually loves you.” Her boss’s greatest disappointment was that she didn’t write, she didn’t name. In response to the good friend’s plea, Harris joked about her strongest bond with the president: “He is aware of that I’m the one particular person round who is aware of how one can correctly pronounce the phrase motherfucker.” It’s a genuinely humorous trade, and telling in its manner.
However these are simply MacGuffins: sops to the Beltway superfans. At its core, Woodward’s e book is about diplomacy. Simply previous the sundry tidbits about Trump—most horrifying, the previous president’s ongoing chumminess with Vladimir Putin, a cost that Trump’s marketing campaign denies—there lies a critical historical past of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. I’ve reported on these tales myself, and I can’t say that I discovered any faults in his account. If something, I’m unashamedly jealous of how he managed to get a couple of large tales that eluded me. Probably the most gorgeous sections of the e book captures Putin mulling the usage of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine—and all of the quiet diplomacy that pushed him again from the brink. Newspapers hinted at this risk on the time, however Woodward reveals the backstory in sturdy and chilling element. (Jon Finer, the deputy head of the Nationwide Safety Council, says that Putin’s choice on whether or not to deploy the nuke appeared like a “coin flip.”) When Biden frets concerning the prospects of nuclear escalation, he’s not simply recalling his youth within the earliest days of the Chilly Conflict. He’s confronting a really actual danger within the current.
In contrast to his predecessors, Biden was distrustful of Woodward. Sufficiently old to recollect how one his books helped to derail Invoice Clinton’s first time period, Biden seems to have chosen to not take part in both this historical past or Woodward’s earlier e book, Peril. Having withheld entry, the president comes throughout as lifeless. It’s not that he’s out to lunch—he’s answerable for his schools, in keeping with Woodward’s reporting. There are simply no actual insights into his psychology. His choice to withdraw from the 2024 race got here too near the e book’s publication date for Woodward to report on the method that led the president to again away. He has little or no to say about probably the most fascinating choice in latest political historical past.
However in some sense, Biden and Woodward had been made for one another. These two octogenarians are each avatars of a bygone period in Washington, when overseas coverage was the shared obsession of the institution. Even when Woodward doesn’t discover Biden personally fascinating, he pores over the president’s conversations with Netanyahu and Putin with real fascination. These aren’t the scraps of reporting that transfer copies, however they’re clearly what he treasures. In his epilogue, he hints at how a lot he loved overlaying “real good religion efforts by the president and his core nationwide safety crew to wield the levers of government energy responsibly and within the nationwide curiosity.”
Regardless of his fixation on substance, Woodward fails to reply—and even ask—a number of the larger questions on Biden’s overseas coverage: Might he have completed extra to bolster Ukraine? Might he have pushed Israel to just accept a cease-fire? However Woodward does arrive at a judgment of the presidency that strikes me as measured and honest: “Based mostly on the proof obtainable now, I consider President Biden and this crew will probably be largely studied in historical past for example of regular and purposeful management.” Regardless of the various errors of this administration, I’m guessing that Woodward’s verdict will cross the check of time, and that not one of the critiques of Conflict is destined for the anthology.
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