The shameless hackery of Bob Woodward

By Michael J.W. Stickings

With the release of those e-mails, along with his appearance on Hannity, on top of his ridiculous attack on President Obama, not to mention his long history of brutally inept analysis, Bob Woodward has exposed himself, to the extent that he wasn't exposed already, as a fucking idiot and shameless Beltway hack.

Once upon a time, he exposed the malfeasance of a president, and it was riveting, and made history, and cemented his legacy as a great reporter. But most of his career, cruising off Watergate, has been spent sticking his moist finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, writing hero-worshipping appraisals of "great men" like Alan Greenspan, and using his reputation to scare enough insiders to pass along inside information to publish book after book of supposedly great reporting.

But enough already. He's a joke. (Is it really any wonder he was a frequent Larry King guest?) I still love All the President's Men (one of my favorite movies), and it's still pretty amazing what happened with Bernstein and Bradlee and Deep Throat and Nixon, but his credibility, to the extent that he had much left anyway, is done.

Bob Woodward attacks Obama for "a kind of madness"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Back when Bob Woodward mattered.

Honestly, it's hard to believe that anyone pays attention to this idiot anymore:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief's decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is "a kind of madness."

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying, 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need' or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?" Woodward added. "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."

Let's address this in order:

First, no, Reagan likely wouldn't have, but that's because he was an extreme militarist who didn't give a damn about the budget, in fact exploding the national debt with outrageous military spending. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, though, one could say that he was right to do so at the time because, you know, there was that whole Cold War going on and it was important to ramp up the military spending and spread the military's reach far and wide. I won't give him that benefit, but, regardless, it's silly to say that what was necessary then is necessary now.

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How Fox News misinforms: 15 minutes with Sean Hannity

Guest post by Ted Leibowitz

Ed. note: Ted's good friends with our former associate editor and co-blogger Creature, and Ted often wrote for Creature's now-on-long-hiatus blog State of the Day. Ted also guest blogged here at The Reaction. Looking back, I found a post from December 2008 in which he was rather critical of then President-elect Obama for choosing Rick Warren, who supported California's anti-gay Prop 8, to give the inaugural invocation. (We love President Obama here, but it's not like we're completely supportive of everything he does.) Well, it's great to welcome Ted back to the fold with a post on the completely unfair and unbalanced coverage of the election by the delusional folks at Fox. -- MJWS

Ted is an award-winning internet radio music director / DJ focused on bringing the best new and interesting indie rock to his worldwide listenership via his 10-year old station BAGeL Radio. He has been featured on panels at music/tech conferences and writes about the exciting new business of music as well as the foot-dragging, entrenched, dinosaur-like old music industry. Ted mainly tends to share his political thoughts around election time as this time of year makes him an insomniac.

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You lost, Sean. Oops.

I turned on the TV Wednesday night. It was tuned to Fox News. Sean Hannity was on. I watched, so you don't have to. For those of you who don't live in the U.S. and don't get the pleasure of tuning into Fox News, perhaps this sampling will help you understand how nearly 58 million Americans this week voted for a guy they didn't even like: they watch Fox News.

Below is what I gleaned from watching about 15-20 minutes of the show.

Sean Hannity is disgusted by President Obama for dirty campaigning.

SH: "One tragedy of this election is that Obama's dirty tactics have now been vindicated, and we're now going to see this [sic] kind of tactics replicated for many years to come. Thanks to Barack Obama, politics is now dirtier than it was, and it will get worse as others try to now perfect this "politics of personal destruction."

Apparently Mr. Hannity was not paying attention when George W. Bush (who is rarely mentioned anymore on Fox News for some reason) mercilessly took down one of his own, Senator John McCain, in the Republican primaries prior to the 2000 presidential election. Nor Dubya's second presidential campaign, during which Karl "Dubya's Brain" Rove invented the Swift Boat campaign smear against his opponent John Kerry, a recipient of the Purple Heart medal.

"If I'm [one of the people who ran Obama's campaign], today, I'm embarrassed," Hannity said, "because they knew no boundaries when it came to lying, and demonizing, slandering, smearing, besmirching, attacking a nice guy."

Hannity referred to the Obama campaign as "dirty and ugly and mean."

Even if this were true, it would be very "pot calling the kettle black" of someone at Fox News to disparage a campaign over such deeds. Fox News has on its payroll the unchallenged modern grand master of campaign dirty tricks, Karl Rove. Karl Rove learned dirty politics in the Nixon administration and went on to run many a smear campaign on behalf of George W. Bush with highlights including hinting that Texas Governor Ann Richards (1994) was a lesbian and suggesting that Senator John McCain (2000) was psychologically unstable due to his time as a POW (and also that McCain's wife was on drugs and that McCain had fathered an African-American love child). And who can forget the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame (2003) and the aforementioned Swift Boaters (2004).

The same Karl Rove who wouldn't concede Obama's victory on election night even after CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and his own Fox News had already called it. Perhaps he thought if he kept barking he could pull James Baker out of a hat, like in 2000. But enough about Rove.

Next, Hannity had Ann Coulter on the show.

Coulter: "Recent immigrants are more likely to be on government assistance. The Democrats lure them in, get them on government assistance... recent immigrants are for more likely to be on government assistance than native-born Americans..." (I doubt she gets the irony of her poor word choice with "native... American")... get them on welfare, and they vote Democratic."

She continued, "Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act was specifically designed to change the demographics of this nation."

Suddenly, 47 years after the fact, Ann Coulter woke up and realized that the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act was a liberal conspiracy to change the demographics of the U.S. by luring immigrants to our shores in order to get them addicted to government assistance so that they would some day vote Democratic.

Mr. Kennedy, if Ms. Coulter is right, you were an even more incredibly forward-thinking political genius than anyone knew.

Coulter then said, "I think Mitt Romney would have won if he'd had the same demographics that Ronald Reagan had."

Yes, Ann, in an alternate reality, Mitt Romney could have won the Presidency of the United States this week. Unfortunately for Mitt, and you, and Sean, and Karl, and Fox News, we live in this reality.

Coulter went on to refer, in passing, to Bush's wars as "wars that help America." Off-handed remarks like that get bandied about without explanation all the time on Fox News, implanting unsubstantiated falsehoods in viewers' minds.

Then there was this exchange:

AC: "Simpson-Bowles [a commission set up by President Obama to address growing U.S. debt] would be better than anything Obama could come up with."

SH: "Tax reform is a sneaky way of basically raising taxes..."

AC: "...raising taxes, which produces less revenue to the government."

Wait a second... raising taxes is a way to produce less revenue for the government?!?! What?!?!

Then a favorite Fox News straw man came up: the Liberal Media, which is apparently a monolithic entity that works in concert against the interests of conservatives and America.

SH: "The Liberal Media put all it's resources behind re-electing Barack Obama."

He then had Bob Woodward of The Washington Post on to talk about how the Liberal Media worked to get Obama re-elected. Problem was, Woodward brought up three examples of how the "mainstream media" (which Fox always refers to as the Liberal Media) hammered Obama in recent months.

Hannity's response was (paraphrasing), "Well, you may have some [valid] points, but I don't think the Liberal Media covered the scandals* to my satisfaction." Before I get to just what those "scandals" were, here is what Hannity actually meant:

"Well, you may have some [valid] points, but I'm not going to let the facts which you just stated, Bob Woodward, and which I, Sean Hannity, just acknowledged the validity of, get in the way of me reiterating the false narrative we here at Fox News have created and are ramming down our viewers throats."

After that I could take no more.

*The "scandals" were "The Beghazi Cover Up" (a non-story that Media Matters thoroughly debunked); "The Fast & Furious" (which has been debunked by such liberal rags as Fortune and the NY Daily News); and something about high unemployment numbers, which Woodward had just stated had been pretty well covered by that demon, the Liberal Media.

Held hostage

By Mustang Bobby

Bob Woodward, who has always had an inside scoop on machinations inside the Beltway, is out with a new book on the negotiations last summer over the debt ceiling crisis. The excerpt in The Washington Post details how the House Republicans basically held the president hostage over what is usually a one-page bill to increase the credit limit of the United States, and it's a rather sharp reminder of what happens with the Tea Party-addled lunatics take over the asylum:

The cascading impact would be unknowable. The world could decide to dump U.S. Treasuries. Prices would plummet, interest rates would skyrocket. The one pillar of stability, the United States, the rock in the global economy, could collapse.

"So," the president said, "if we give $1.2 trillion now in spending cuts" — the amount in the House bill to get the first increase in the debt ceiling for about six to nine months — "what happens next time?" The Republicans would then come back next year, in the middle of the presidential campaign, and impose more conditions on the next debt ceiling increase. He could not give the Republicans that kind of leverage, that kind of weapon. It was hostage taking. It was blackmail. "This will forever change the relationship between the presidency and the Congress.

"Imagine if, when Nancy Pelosi had become speaker, she had said to George W. Bush, 'End the Iraq war, or I'm going to cause a global financial crisis.'"

So, Obama said, they had to break the Republicans on this. Otherwise, they would be back whenever it suited them politically.

They were out of options, Geithner said. The only one might be accepting the House bill, loathsome as it might be. "The 2008 financial crisis will be seen as a minor blip if we default," he said.

The president said, "The Republicans are forcing the risk of a default on us. I can't stop them from doing that. We can have the fight now, or we can have the fight later on, but the fight is coming to us."

Nobody came out of this fight without a scar. The president looked weak and gullible for being blind-sided by the Republicans when it was obvious to everyone that they were willing to let the economy crash again just to make Mr. Obama look bad, and the Republicans looked like economic terrorists because, well, they are.

What's ironic but thoroughly predictable is that now, during the campaign, the same people who supported the bill with all the draconian measures such as sequestration are moaning and groaning and whining about how terrible things will be if it happens. The whiners include Mitt Romney, whose running mate voted for the bill.

We may be short on cash, but there sure seems to be a lot of brass out there. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Woodward slams Rumsfeld

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For writing a memoir that is essentially one big steaming pile of dishonesty:

Rumsfeld's memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others -- including President Bush -- distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won't wash.

The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires -- facts he has completely left out of his memoir.

*****

When all the records are available, the other memoirs written and the history complete, this failure to accept responsibility will likely be his legacy.

Woodward has his own failings -- he too often trusts his sources unthinkingly, his analysis is often lacking, or non-existent, and he rarely connects the dots in any satisfactory way -- but he is undeniably a well-respected and generally non-partisan reporter of the historical record. There is still much blame to go around -- Cheney deserves his fair share, too, along with the various other warmongers in and around Bush's bubble, as well as those pushing for war generally -- but clearly Rumsfeld was a key architect of the disaster that was (and to a certain extent still is) the Iraq War and Woodward should be applauded for holding him to account.

One just wonders if this isn't part of some anti-Rumsfeld smear campaign conducted by those on the right -- those in or around Bush's bubble -- who see him as an easy scapegoat, a convenient fall guy for all that went wrong. You wouldn't think it could be Rumsfeld's pal Cheney, but what about someone else?

Okay, maybe not. Maybe Woodward just had to respond to Rumsfeld's blatant dishonesty? Maybe. (It is, after all, at the estimable Tom Ricks's blog.)

Either way, he makes some excellent points. Read the whole thing.

Obama-Clinton '12! Wait... Hillary???!!!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday on CNN, Bob Woodward told John King that an Obama-Clinton ticket is "on the table" for 2012. "Some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012."

It makes sense, I suppose. I was one of those pushing for Obama-Clinton back in '08, if only to unite the party after a fairly brutal primary campaign, though I never saw it as much of a possibility. I thought Biden was a great pick, but he'll have had four years and the opportunity to make a mark on U.S. foreign and military policy -- his strength -- and Hillary would certainly be an exciting replacement.

And, of course, it would set Hillary up well for a presidential run in '16.

But it's not going to happen. As BTD notes at TalkLeft -- correctly, I think, though things can change quickly in politics -- the '16 nomination is hers "if she wants it no matter what." Plus, "[n]ot being Obama's VP gives her some distance in case things go way south with his Administration."

What's more, Biden's departure, which wouldn't necessarily be voluntary, would undoubtedly be spun by Republicans and the media as an admission of failure on the part of the president.

Woodward has astonishingly good sources, there's no doubt about that, but sometimes -- and this is one of those all-too-frequent times -- you have to wonder if he knows what he's talking about. Anything could be "on the table," after all, and it's possible that this is just wishful thinking on the part of a Hillary insider or two, who may very well just be using Woodward to float a seemingly crazy idea.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, presuming that the Biden-to-Hillary transition would be managed properly (which may be too much to presume at this point), but it's highly unlikely.

Woodward, McChrystal, and Afghanistan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Greenwald:

Advocates of escalation in Afghanistan chose Bob Woodward to "reprise his role as warmonger hagiographer" by publishing Gen. Stanley McChrystal's "confidential" memo to the President arguing for increased troops. As Digby notes, the vague case for continuing to occupy that country is virtually identical to every instance where America's war-loving Foreign Policy Community advocates the need for new and continued wars. It's nothing more than America's standard, generic "war-is-necessary" rationale.

It's just the same old "experts" and "wise men" pursuing the same old failed policies.

What is needed is not more war, endless war, but, in Afghanistan at least, a justifiable rationale for the war to continue -- a purpose, a goal, a definition of what would constitute victory.

But what if there isn't, as there does not seem to be, such a rationale? Is it right to escalate a war without one? And is it right to send yet more men and women into such a war to risk their lives in purposeless battle?

Woodward and bullshit

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Bob Woodward may, justifiably or not, be one of Washington's most eminent reporters, but this... this is just blatantly irresponsible:

Appearing on the Chris Matthews Show Sunday, Bob Woodward offered a rather cryptic prediction of scandal that will plague the Obama White House.

"This may be tantalizing but vague," said the Washington Post scribe. "I don't think the nanny or household tax problems and so forth are over for the Obama administration..."

Matthews pressed ever so slightly for more information, but Woodward did not oblige: "I say it's not over."

Right. Maybe it's not. Maybe Woodward knows something that most of the rest of us don't (as has often been the case in the past). But then why hint at it like this? Why so vague -- so annoying vague as to be not tantalizing. If he can't say anything more, or is unwilling to, that is, if he's not prepared to provide any details, any substance, then why say anything at all? Why not just comment if and when something more substantive actually comes out? He wasn't breaking any story on Matthews's show, after all, he was just, ever so coyly, as if reminding us all that he's the famous reporter, predicting a scandal to come?

Woodward has credibility as an insider to whom people are willing to spill the beans, I grant him that, and some of his books have been quite interesting, and, yes, he'll always have Watergate, but otherwise, and notably in his appearances on CNN with Larry King, he has pathetically little to offer in the way of substantive commentary or analysis. And now, it seems, he's resorting to... what? Gossip? Bullshit? Pre-emptive scandalmongering?

Watch for yourself. As usual, his colleagues "ooh" and "ahh" at his mysterious ways, kowtowing to the insider of insiders, to the man who knew Deep Throat and who must surely know so much.

Until he wants to do some actual reporting, though, he should just keep his mouth shut.