He’d won two Pulitzer Prizes for print journalism, one for exposing the crooked ways of a president, the other for bringing Sept. 11 to our fingertips.
That’s what I wanted Tuesday in Durham. That’s what I hoped for. I wanted the fall of Richard Nixon and Watergate and 9/11, a heaping portion of the paths Washington Post superstar Bob Woodward had traveled to pull back the curtain on these two history-making topics.
Especially Watergate, the case Woodward and colleague Carl Bernstein cracked as reporters at the Post in the 1970s.
Instead, during an open forum at the University of New Hampshire’s Memorial Union Building, I got comments on the person who’s been commented on more than any other person in world history.
I got Donald Trump.
Woodward told us he’d sent a taped interview he had with Trump to a psychiatrist friend and got this response from the good doctor: “It is the most clear case of narcissistic personality disorder I’ve ever, ever seen.”
Not exactly stop-the-presses sort of information, but my bad for not anticipating this. Let’s face facts: That bearded, debonair, Mexican man in the beer commercial who poses with beautiful women is no longer the most interesting man in the world.
Trump, the president-elect, is. The packed house wanted to talk about Trump, and Woodward was happy to oblige.
Can Trump usurp the power of the Constitution? Will his business ventures represent a conflict of interest? Is the electoral college – as opposed to the popular vote – fair? Did the saturated media coverage of Trump help him win the White House? Is the man himself dangerous?
Woodward made a reference to the power Trump has inherited, and it sounded to me as though he had the president elect’s impetuous nature in mind. He reminded us that the Constitution states the Congress must declare war, not the president.
But he also said George W. Bush could have invaded Mexico if he had so chosen.
“It’s one person,” Woodward said. “It’s not a committee, it not the cabinet, not the National Security Council. The president can do what he wants to do.”
Once, back in 1972, President Richard Nixon could not do what he wanted to do, thanks in large part to the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein. Before the internet and Google, before cell phones and laptops, before technology and impatience moved society onto the Autobahn, wiping out all speed limits, we had reporters who used pickaxes and shovels to dig, dig, dig.
Woodward, now an associate editor at the Post, worked with Bernstein in 1972 to tie the Nixon White House to a burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. Two years later, Nixon resigned, his own party attacking him for corruption and threatening impeachment.
It stands as the best example of investigative reporting ever, written about in books by Woodward and Bernstein. Heck, Robert Redford portrayed Woodward in the film All the President’s Men. Doesn’t get much more interesting than that.
Woodward, of course, brushed against the outskirts of Watergate during his 50-minute presentation, which was followed by a question-and-answer period.
“Why did Nixon fail? We asked him,” said Woodward, referring to an interview with Trump during the campaign season. “Trump said because of his personality, and I kind of jumped out of my chair and said, ‘Well, yeah, the crimes,’ and Trump said, ‘Oh, yeah, those two.’ ”
At that moment, I kind of jumped out of my chair, then buckled my seat belt, ready to absorb all things Watergate. I wanted to smell the D.C. garage where Woodward met Deep Throat, his secret source identified 30 years later as Mark Felt, the FBI’s No. 2 man.
I wanted to hear his reaction when, after the five Watergate burglars had been arrested for bugging Democratic headquarters, he sat in the courthouse during their arraignment and overheard that James McCord and Bernard Barker had ties to the CIA and FBI.
And what he thought when former CIA operative Howard Hunt’s phone number was discovered in the address books of the Watergate burglars. And when he called the White House and learned that Hunt was in the office of Charles Colson, special counsel to Nixon. And when Attorney General John Mitchell, told by Bernstein that the Post was running a story that said Mitchell controlled a secret fund to finance Nixon’s dirty tricks, said on the phone, “Jeeeesus, all that crap, you’re putting in the paper? Good Christ! That’s the most sickening thing I ever heard.”
The Post’s work in ’72 led to Nixon’s exit and Gerald Ford’s ascension to the presidency, and Woodward’s thoughts here were fascinating. Ford pardoned Nixon.
“I thought, ‘Perfection,’ ” Woodward told us Tuesday. “The final corruption.”
Later, after Woodward interviewed Ford and pressed him about his decision to let Nixon off the hook, Woodward said he realized that the ex-president had done the right thing, that he needed to move the country away from Watergate, start the healing process.
“Nixon with the tapes would be indicted and go to jail, and we were going to have two to three more years of Watergate,” Woodward said. “(Ford) said to me in this plaintive voice, ‘I needed my own presidency.’ I wrote in my book that rather than the pardon being corruption, it was quite gutsy.”
Ultimately the conversation moved back to last month’s election and Trump. Through a show of hands, an overwhelming number of those who attended were Clinton supporters. In fact, I counted perhaps 20 Trump voters, in a crowd of at least 1,000.
An undercurrent existed, one that told me many in the audience still had trouble accepting Trump’s victory. Woodward sensed this, too, saying, “The election’s over, as best I can tell, unless there’s some surprise.”
One woman, admittedly not a Trump person, wanted Woodward to explain the huge amount of media coverage Trump received. Did this help him win? To me, her message, while unspoken, was that major media outlets sometimes reported on Trump to increase ratings and add readers.
“The coverage was skewed from the beginning,” the woman said, “because of his showmanship and his ability to play the media.”
Play the media? Play Bob Woodward? Manipulate him, fool him, exploit him?
Bob Woodward?
More than 40 years ago, none of the president’s men were able to do that. Neither was the president himself. The subject has always intrigued me, so after the presentation, I sought a few comments from Woodward tied to Watergate.
He was mobbed. Everyone wanted a selfie, an autograph, a handshake, a closer look. I waited, then gave him my card, figuring he’d give a fellow print media reporter a few minutes.
“I’ve got to get something to eat,” Woodward told me.
He left the cavernous room and headed down the hall. I tried one more time, chasing behind him and, to lighten the mood, telling him he wouldn’t respect me if I hadn’t dug a little harder for information.
“Let’s try one (question),” he said. “Go ahead.”
I asked Woodward what the single biggest factor was that helped him break Watergate.
“Katharine Graham the owner who supported us and Ben Bradlee and the other editors who interrogated us, questioned us, and then had the courage to publish,” Woodward said.
I kept going, citing Deep Throat’s contention that the intelligence of Nixon’s inner circle was more myth, created by the media, than fact.
“He was one of many sources,” Woodward told me. “It’s all laid out in the book. Good luck with your column.”
At that point, I wish I’d asked about Trump.
(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304 or rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)