On the hook
Siva has a point.
I don’t know why I overlooked that this morning. Why the hell (obvious selfish reasons aside) did Woodward not report the story at the time instead of saving it for his book launch?
I suppose a likely answer is that Trump agreed to the interviews for a book, not a Washington Post story. But maybe in a life or death situation you ought to break a deal of that kind? Just maybe?
Well, it wasn’t his life or death. And what’s a few (okay, few tens of thousands) anonymous deaths next to an advance worth millions? Maybe Woodward’s subject rubbed off on him, or drained away his public-spiritedness like some sort of pudgy, orange incubus?
Generous of you to presume that Woodward isn’t just as much of a psychopath as Trump.
He very well could be, but I’m more familiar with Trump’s CV than Woodward’s, so I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
It’s pretty easy from the perspective of September to criticize Woodward for holding back. Indeed, maybe he should have shouted his story from the rooftops straight away and damn his book deal and any other consequences.
Consider the context though. Covid had not yet hit the USA. Only a small number of people world wide really understood the gravity of the looming pandemic. US politics was mired in 1001 other Trump/GOP controversies – many of which at that time looked bigger and more important.
Woodward has been around US politics for a lifetime. Maybe he struggled with releasing that information, maybe he never seriously contemplated it at all. I’ll bet he knew though that if he had done at that point in time the news would have sunk like a pebble tossed into a stormy ocean, with barely a ripple visible. This news is big now precisely because of a destroyed (world) economy and hundreds of thousands of current and future deaths.
Blowing the whistle back then might well have been the ethically right thing to do. Would it have changed the course of world history? I really don’t think so. Now though, at this time in the electoral cycle, at this moment in history? It’s a significant blow, not just to Trump, but to all the Administration and the GOP. It won’t change 20 million votes, but it will change some and if they’re in the right counties, that could change the election.
There are too many people willing to write memoirs that contain information that would have been crucial to any number of investigations starting with the FBI during the campaign and all the way to the present day. Observations of behavior they saw and heard in the White House that were so egregiously illegal or straying dangerously close to that edge. Behavior that could have plunged us into an unnecessary war, and has emboldened autocrats while alienating longstanding allies. Poeple have died because those in the know favored their pocketbooks over their patriotism. Woodward is only the latest asshole. There’s another one out next week.
BTW, if you haven’t read All the President’s Men, I recommend it. Not only for the story, which is interesting in a slow-burn thriller kind of way, but also for the portrait Woodward and Bernstein paint of themselves and each other. The audiobook actually adds another layer – the narrator Richard Poe has a wry style that highlights their different personalities and how they saw each other.
Claire, undoubtedly so. Woodward at least is not part of the Administration. I think that puts him in a markedly different position from the long list of ex-Adminstration officials who have done this. They swore oaths of service. Woodward’s job is to document and report.
Rob, I think the problem comes from the fact that they swore oaths of service to Trump, when they are supposed to swear oaths of service to the country…to us. Trump runs the country like it is his own personal company, and enforces loyalty everywhere. Too many of the officials put their career ahead of their job, and their conscience (if they have one). And some of these books smell like revenge for Trump destroying their career more than acts of tortured conscience…no matter how welcome they may be to the rest of us.