When I was about 13 I watched All the President’s Men for the first time. I suppose I did this for several reasons; some sense of obligation stemming from the indoctrination into politics courtesy of my family, or maybe the closer tie of my dad’s journalistic career. Whatever the reason I was not as outraged then as I have gradually grown to be. In my early twenties I began to see Bob Woodward as a modern-day Murrow, toppling the greed and hubris of Washington and attempting to separate their misdeeds from those of the good guys. As usual, I may have been a bit to quick to try and find a ‘good guy’ when maybe none existed, maybe not even Woodward.

According to Tina Brown in a fine article by Jay Rosen:

“When Woodward hears political gossip it’s not a couple of lowly hacks at the office water cooler — it’s a transaction between one Big Beast at the heart of the power jungle and another. He hoarded the info for some larger reportorial purpose because that’s what Big Beasts do. They don’t waste time fiddling around with the quotidian crumbs from the dish of the day when they’re aiming to haul in the big, fat story we’ll all be chewing on for months.”

Woodward and Bernstein broke Watergate due in some part to their lack of access to the Nixon White House–another administration with a ‘do not question, with us or against us’ policy–not their wealth of it. After those stunning revelations, the odds and ends of which carried on until very recently, Woodward found himself at the center of everything. A post Watergate Washington was one in which it was more dangerous not to talk to Woodward than to sit down and give him a few minutes. With that much power in tow it’s a very short ride to a place where you’ve lost touch; where you’re inside the bubble looking out.