Woodward's shaky voice and demeanor proves to me,...

Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post, Part II

By Michael Hasty

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The most important propaganda stage the Post has built for George W to act the role of "president" upon was, of course, what the corporate media still prefers to portray as the "defining moment" of Junior's reign—the events of September 11. The challenge was made more difficult by Bush's Fredo Corleone performance on the day the attacks occurred. After acting clueless enough to dawdle in front of a classroom of second-graders for nearly a half-hour following the crash of the second plane, he then spent the rest of the day flying erratically around the country ("Just trying to get out of harm's way," as he later told a reporter), and appearing perplexed and too small for his suit as he addressed a national television audience that night.

This was a job for Superman—which the Post provided in the form of its premier Washington insider, presidential chronicler and US Navy Intelligence veteran, the legendary Watergate reporter, Bob Woodward. Along with Post reporter Dan Balz, Woodward employed his impeccable journalistic fellatio in an eight-part, front-page series of articles giving a moment-to-moment White House account of the first days of the "war on terror," inflating the image of a cowardly dauphin into that of a credibly decisive commander-in-chief. The articles became the basis for Woodward's subsequent bestseller, "Bush At War"—which is probably best viewed as a sequel to his book about the first Gulf War, "The Commanders," featuring many of the same characters.

Woodward's relationship to the Bush family is particularly interesting (see Part 1 of this series for more details). For the uninitiated, Woodward fairly successfully inoculated himself from any future suspicion that he might be too close to the subjects of his writing with his historic coverage of the Watergate scandal. In the matrix of the corporate media, Woodward is still portrayed as the archetypal intrepid investigative reporter who, with his scruffy partner, Carl Bernstein, spoke truth to power and brought down a president.

In the real world, Woodward has proven to be uncannily close to the highest centers of power.