Woodward must be shaking his head in wonder at the reception of Plan of Attack. If it were the 70s,it would be like Nixon inviting Woodward and Bernstien into the White House and giving them carte blanche to interview everyone, from Halderman and Erlichman on down to the plumbers, and once the Wategate book came out, receiving a mixed reaction. Woodward would be on TV saying 'I've got the tapes!' The Dems would be touting it as a devastating expose of a corrupt administration and the White House would be recommending it as a warts and all portrait of the President that they felt was a net plus.
How is this possible? Three things come to mind.
- They're stupid. They allow a reporter to get them on tape admitting to crimes like transferring the 700 million from the Afghanistan funds without Congressional approval. And admitting to outragous acts like informing The Saudi Ambasador about the war before telling their own Secretary of State, not to mention lying to the country about it.
- We're stupid. We live in a time of such moral relativism and are so under-educated that we (the general public) don't recognize the significance of these revelations even though they're on tape. You could have a dozen smoking guns and the public's reaction would be, wow, those are nice guns. I like the smoke.
- The Bush folks don't give a shit. The fix is in and they just don't care what anybody thinks.
Like most things, it's probably a combination of all of the above. Strange times we're living in, and nothing points it up better than Woodward redux.