Woodward: from Watergate to
BOB Woodward began his career by bringing down a president, Richard Nixon. Fort y-four years later, t he premier chronicler of l i fe in t he White House could be foreshadowing the demise of another, Donald Trump.
In Fear: Trump in the White House, which hit stores on Tuesday, Woodward paints a devastating picture of a US president in crisis – an angr y, paranoid leader whose sta f f batt les to rein in his worst impulses.
It is his most blistering work since he and colleague Carl Bernstein drove Nixon to resign with t heir Watergate reporting for The Washington Post – the foundation for t heir landmark book All the President ’s Men.
Fear, Woodward’s 19th book, immediately rocketed to number one on Amazon’s best-seller list, driven by excerpts reported last week depicting the White House in a perpetual “nervous breakdown.”
It quotes Trump’s own chief of staff, John Kelly, calling his boss “unhinged” and the White House “Crazytown.”
Trump’s former lawyer, John Dowd, depicts the president as a congenital liar.
While it is hardly the first book to paint Trump’s 20-month-old administration in an unflattering light, Fear comes with something different: the Woodward stamp of quality, honed since the 1970s.
Woodward, 75, studied at Yale University and did a five-year tour in the US Navy, before turning to journalism. When he first applied at The Washington Post, he was rejected due to a lack of experience.
After a stint at a local paper in the Washington suburbs, he got his shot at the Post in 1971.
He had barely a year of reporting under his belt when he and Bernstein stumbled into the story of a lifetime – the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party offices in Washington’s Watergate compound.
Their classic gumshoe investigation of the scandal prompted several formal investigations. In 1974, Nixon resigned.
All The President’s Men was a smash hit that was turned into an Oscarwinning film. The man chosen to play Woodward? Robert Redford.
Unparalleled access
Since then, whenever Woodward calls, Washington’s politerati answer without hesitation.
He has put out a book about ever y t wo years, including aut horitative, rea l-time tomes on Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
Woodward has also offered deep insights into the Supreme Court, the Central Intelligence Agency, and former Federal Reserve czar Alan Greenspan – all while remaining at the Post, now as an associate editor.
The steady stream of books has allowed him to keep the channels of communication open with the fading titans of Washington, while also opening the doors of newcomers.
His brand as a reliable reporter about the corridors of power is virtually unmatched, and his dogged ability to back up whatever insider tales he hears has earned him grudging respect in the US capital.
“We always felt it was important for the president and others to participate in interviews with him,” told Scott McClellan, a spokesman for president George W. Bush in the 2000s.
‘Not my job to judge ‘
In all of his books, Woodward lays out meticulous details of meetings, discussions and policy issues in a wooden, no-drama-added style, and avoids stepping back and putting what he reports into any perspective.
“These are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent,” author Joan Didion criticised in a 1996 essay on six of his works.
But his defenders say the just-thefacts approach is the bedrock of his credibility.
“In an age of ‘ a lternative facts’ and corrosive t weets about ‘fa ke news,’ Woodward is t r ut h’s gold standard,” veteran journa list Ji l l Abramson wrote in The Washington Post about Fear.
“It’s not my job to provide judgment,” Woodward told the website Vox earlier this year, saying his job