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It's not the writing that Tim Rutten likes about the new Bob Woodward book, Plan of Attack. He writes in today's LAT review, "Woodward's prose can charitably be described as utilitarian." But overall, Rutten says:
"Plan of Attack" is a remarkable book, one that fulfills the too often ephemeral promise of what has come to be called investigative journalism. What Woodward has delivered is not so much a first draft of history but history in real time...Anyone who goes to the polls without becoming familiar with this book's contents and forming an opinion about their significance risks dereliction in the exercise of his or her franchise.
Readers will find it necessary to draw their own conclusions about this story's implications, because of Woodward's scrupulous adherence to certain journalistic conventions...
For a dissenting view on that last point, see Gregg Easterbrook's blog at the New Republic:
Bad enough that extended sections of recent Woodward efforts have been fabricated, in the literalist sense--conjectured conversations placed in quotation marks. What is presented may be similar to what was actually said, but cannot have the verity Woodward claims, unless tape recorders are rolling or a stenographer is seated nearby when President Bush and Colin Powell speak in private. Woodward and his editors have cheapened the quotation mark, changing its meaning from "what was said" to "whatever sounds about right."...Does Woodward crave attention so badly he can no longer write a book that conforms to the standard disciplines of nonfiction and to standard distinctions between truth and conjecture?
One reason journalism keeps declining in public standing is that Woodward, a leading figure, so prominently devalues the craft.
For Earth Day, Easterbrook also restates his contrarian take on the environment: all trends are positive except for greenhouse gas accumulation, but Democrats and the media don't want to admit it, and the Republicans don't want to admit that regulation works. On this, he writes, Republicans have been their own worst PR advisers.
Just as voters are conditioned to believe that Democrats are soft on defense, even though the claim is preposterous, voters are now conditioned to believe Republicans want to harm the environment, even though the claim is preposterous.
Easterbrook is shilling right to compensate for his own recent misstatments; that should be obvious. But this quote:
Write something difficult and significant. Realize your potential.
...coming from Easterbrook, given Woodward's access to all of Washington's decision-makers, and several subsequent Administration cries for uncle (such as the Pentagon deletion) is utterly mockworthy. I doubt if Easterbrook has conducted 75 interviews in the past ten years; I doubt if he'll conduct 75 in the next ten, if he keeps this up.
Posted by: joseph at April 23, 2004 12:38 PMMy bad. Here's the only link I wanted to make:
Posted by: joseph at April 23, 2004 12:40 PMI'm pretty sure Woodward's ideological biases lean left, if not outright leftwing. That automatically means his perceptions, if not methods, are prone to being unreliable. Too many times when I've seen or heard foolish conclusions or observations, they've invariably come from a liberal. Hell, look at all the members of the media who know their profession is full of left-leaning thinkers, yet who can't even say, yes, that definitely must have some impact on how we deal with issues, people and places.
Posted by: David at April 23, 2004 02:56 PMActually, Woodward is a long-time Republican. Oh, well. Just another foolish observation and conclusion from a conservative.
Posted by: Chris at April 23, 2004 05:24 PMVery neat the way "David" labels Woodward as "leftwing," then issues a peremptory dismissal of his conclusions. This is how you proceed if you are unwilling or unable to argue on the basis of substance.
Woodward (and those of us visiting this blog) deserve better.
Posted by: Tim McGarry at April 23, 2004 06:10 PMYea, Woodward is a Republican. Sort of like the way Arianna Huffington is a Republican.
Woodward said this about the previous guy in the White House:
Clinton has an incredible mind; probably no president other than Franklin Roosevelt in this century had an equal combination of intellect and political skill. On television he is able to communicate in a way perhaps no one ever has. Reagan was an amateur compared to Clinton.
Now Woodward may have said the same thing even if Clinton's "mind" leaned to the right. But I kind of doubt it. Even more so because Woodward sure does give lots of benefit of the doubt to a person whose mind tilts even farther to the left:
To mark the one year anniversary of his "historic" interview with Hillary Clinton, Today co-host Matt Lauer invited two Hillary defenders to the program on January 27. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Ann Douglas, a Columbia professor and author of a glowing Vogue profile of Mrs. Clinton....After airing a clip of Hillary denying Clinton had relations with Lewinsky, Lauer inquired, "So, Bob, at that moment, no doubt in your mind that the First Lady did not know the truth about the story."
Woodward, demonstrating a lack of his usually reliable skepticism, responded, "Well based on the best evidence we have at this point she obviously was speaking from the heart, and, which she is able to do with is, I think we all agree, great force. The important thing, she was speaking to a number of audiences here. She was speaking to the Democratic base in the party and she said ‘Look, I’m on his side, I believe him.’ I also think she was speaking to her husband, who then the next day went and gave his first flawless State of the Union address after the scandal broke."
After Lauer played part of the interview where the First Lady admitted if the charges were proven true that it ‘would be a very serious offense,’ Lauer asked Woodward, "How does that sound a year later?"
Woodward did not explore her disingenuousness. If she didn’t know the truth about Lewinsky, how could she plausibly claim it never happened on national television? Instead he contended her statement only proved she didn’t know the Lewinsky allegations were true. Woodward claimed, "I think it shows that she really did not know and that in fact for her to say that it would be a very serious offense if this is true, I mean, I take her at her word there. I do not think this is an act."
Woodward probably was thinking, "Poor, innocent Hillary, so noble in her liberalism. I give her credit for seeing nothing but kindness and love in people, even when it comes to her wonderful yet horny husband. No wonder she thought those cold-hearted conservatives were part of a "vast rightwing conspiracy!"
Posted by: David at April 24, 2004 02:25 AMI think you're proving the point that if you're convinced of it, you can see bias anywhere. A man who is normally votes Republican thinks that Clinton had a brilliant political mind (he did). Wow, left-wing conspiracy time! These inferences border on either the pathetic or the absurd.
Posted by: ted at April 24, 2004 02:54 PMThe original post concerned Woodward's book on Bush and the invasion of Iraq. "David" is evidently incapable of addressing the topic at hand.
Posted by: Tim McGarry at April 24, 2004 07:00 PMHow the hell does anyone know that Woodward has a track record of voting for Republicans at the voting booth?? Has he come right out and said he's marked his ballots for conservatives in the past (and more than, say, once or twice in his lifetime)? He may have, but if libs----like ted and "Tim"----are making that claim, I'm skeptical.
Posted by: David at April 25, 2004 02:58 AMHere's one that will really twist your bipartisan knickers. A card-carrying lib, Joan Didion, wrote an excellent article in the NY Review of Books (subscription only) on Woodward:
Mr. Woodward's aversion to engaging the ramifications of what people say to him has been generally understood as an admirable quality, at best a mandarin modesty, at worst a kind of executive big-picture focus, the entirely justifiable oversight of someone with a more important game to play. Yet what we see in The Choice is something more than a matter of an occasional inconsistency left unexplored in the rush of the breaking story, a stray ball or two left unfielded in the heart of the opportunity, as Mr. Woodward describes his role, "to sit with many of the candidates and key players and ask about the questions of the day as the campaign unfolded." What seems most remarkable in this Woodward book is exactly what seemed remarkable in the previous Woodward books, each of which was presented as the insiders' inside story and each of which went on to become a number-one bestseller: these are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent.
The end of the piece excoriates Woodward for writing "political pornography," by which she means using certain sources who have their own reasons for wanting to talk to him, writing his "contemporaneous history" to privilege these points of view, but without analyzing motives to qualify his story. Just writing a book to flatter his sources, to maintain visibility, to obtain new sources, ...
I remember struggling through all the details of Veil to get to the deathbed non-confession of Bill Casey. What's the point? Posted by: Mike Turmon at April 25, 2004 08:38 AM
And how do you know I am a liberal? Here's my voting record since age 18
Reagan
Reagan
Bush I
Perot
Libertarian Candidate
Bush II
This year will probably go for Kerry, Bush's team scares me and I think they're incompetent.
I am socially liberally, fiscally conservative. But I think the idea of liberal bias in the media or anywhere else is self-imposed martyrdom. I'm anti-Whining, pro-Winning.
Posted by: ted at April 26, 2004 10:39 AMI guessed your ideological tilt correctly ("socially liberal")...you sound at the very least like a variation of Arianna Huffington, a person who's tilting leftward (and I'm assuming you're being honest about your voting record since 1980).
One of my basic ways of detecting whether someone is liberal or not is if he or she can't even acknowledge something as basic as the media being prone to liberal bias. And duh! about that notion, because surveys in the past reveal that over 80% of reporters and editors are registered Democrats or philosophically liberal, even leftwing.
Posted by: David at April 26, 2004 04:00 PMDavid, if you can't address Woodward's remarks about Bush on their merits, you're not bringing anything very interesting to the table.
You're also shortchanging yourself. Anyone who dismisses what someone says purely on the basis of whether they perceive them as liberal or conservative isn't likely to ever learn anything new -- and that holds for people on all parts of the spectrum.
Posted by: Tim McGarry at April 26, 2004 05:28 PM
of LA Observed
it's time to stop paying attention to people like easterbrook. like jessican hahn back in the late 80s and early 90s, this guy's meter expired 2 hours ago and there's still no meter maid to write him up.
and don't forget his anti-semitic rant a few months back about Eisner et al.
Posted by: Jim in LA at April 23, 2004 12:35 PM