"Woodward vs. White House: Washington at its weirdest"

Woodward vs. White House: Washington at its weirdest

By Paul Farhi at the WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/woodward-vs-white-house-washington-at-its-weirdest/2013/02/28/d3f707fc-81ed-11e2-8074-b26a871b165a_story.html

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Woodward, chronicler of presidents since the Watergate era (which might not have been an era without his reporting), pushed back against a White House challenge to his claim in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed that President Obama and his budget negotiators had come up with the idea of the sequester and had “moved the goal posts” in talks with Republicans by insisting on new taxes.

That characterization bought Woodward a heated lecture from Gene Sperling, Obama’s top economic adviser, who told him the following in a subsequent e-mail: “I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying . . . that [Obama] asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

In an interview Wednesday with Politico, it sounded like war; indeed, the headline was “Woodward at War,” a play on the title of one of his best-selling books about President George W. Bush.

Politico excerpted Sperling’s e-mail, trimming the “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend” part, and suggested Woodward didn’t take kindly to Sperling’s admonition.

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