Too Many Marts

by digby

I think it’s really great that Bob Woodward is such a stand up guy who refuses to divulge his sources no matter what the consequences. He has always shown excellent journalistic judgement in these things so we can trust him to know what is important and what isn’t.

For instance, in his examination of the presidency “Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” he discusses how dumb it was for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton not to just tell what they knew right away and get it all over with:

After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon’s succesesors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.

Good advice, I’m sure. Yet somehow this high minded cautionary tale devolved in the second half into a full-on insider tabloid expose of President Clinton’s dick. Literally:

“Bennett had tried … to obtain the details from the statement Jones had made about Clinton allegedly having ‘distinguishing characteristics’ in his genital area. It hadn’t worked, but Bennett wanted to make sure there were no such characteristics.

At first Bennett thought it might be a mole or birthmark. So he started asking longtime male Clinton friends who might have seen him in the shower at one point or another in his life. Had they seen anything? No one had.

Later, Bennett was in the Oval Office with Clinton, and the president had to go to the washroom. For a moment, Bennett thought of following the president into the Oval Office bathroom to see what he might see, but he decided against it. ‘We can’t have president of the United States’ penis on trial,’ Bennett finally said to Clinton directly. ‘There is an ugh factor in politics.’ ‘It’s an outrage,’ Clinton replied. ‘It’s totally not true. Go to all my doctors. It’s just false…[Bennett said]”The only step that was not taken was to ask the doctor to induce an erection to reduplicate the circumstances that Jones had alleged. That was unthinkable.”‘

That’s the good judgment I’m talking about. Woody’s very good at keeping secrets. He prides himself on it. But this particular bit of information was essential for the public to know. Apparently, he believed that if only Clinton had dropped his pants on national TV, he could have moved beyond his problems.

Frank Rich wrote a review of this book back in 1999 in which he excoriated Woodward for his insider bloviating, making the case that Woodward and the Quinn contingent were reflexive antagonists of every president. Little did he know that Woodward would take his criticism so to heart that he would become a mindless hagiographer for the most callow, vacuous leader this country would ever produce.

In his review he discusses at some length Woodward’s prudish judgmentalism toward the presidents:

Ford is chastised for bringing into the White House ”a Congressional lifestyle, which often included alcohol at lunch.” Woodward uncovers one scandalous occasion in Denver when the President ”skipped several dozen pages of his remarks because he had what his aides called a few ‘marts,’ for martinis, before speaking.” You’d think that Ford’s skipping several dozen pages of luncheon remarks would be a blessing for those in attendance, or at least something less than an indictable offense. But in ”Shadow,” it’s another cue for Woodward to seize the moral high ground and condemn a benighted President Who Did Not Escape the Shadow of Watergate.

Similarly, the Carter Administration becomes an excuse for Woodward to rehash ancient charges of cocaine possession against the White House aide Hamilton Jordan. Though Jordan was ultimately cleared, he was not ”totally innocent” after all — for he ”liked to drink beer and loved chasing women” and ”did go to places like . . . Studio 54,” where other patrons might have behaved naughtily, thereby making Jordan ”a magnet for allegations.” Jordan, it seems, is guilty by association with nightspots.

Under Woodward’s moral tutelage, Jordan recants his past in ”Shadow,” belatedly seeing the errors of his partying ways of two decades ago. But Jordan’s real problem back then, Woodward suggests without irony, may have been partying with noninsiders. ”Shadow” reports that Jordan ”stiffed the Washington establishment and its dinner-party circuit with particular relish” — apparently a hanging offense. The punishment, Woodward reports, was a long 1977 article in The Washington Post Style section ”about the strain between the Carterites and Washington.”

And then along came Clinton’s penis.

Woodward, like Broder and Sally and Richard Cohen and Cokie and the rest of the moribund DC establishment, are obsessed with the social and personal activities of their King (and their own relationships to him) and have absolutely no interest or insight into the corrupt, depraved, malevolent political force the Republican Washington establishment has become. (It’s hardball politics!) As long as they are getting their due deference and nobody’s slip is showing, they are more than happy to keep any behavior that the unwashed masses might find unpalatable under wraps — things like war or institutionalized character assassination. The only scandals worth reporting are “too many marts” and “trashing the place” — behaviors that imply the courtier’s social mores are unimportant. Tsk tsk tsk.

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