On historic indictment day, Bob Woodward hears the echo from Nixon to Trump.
The Watergate-era journalist spoke April 4 in Des Moines as presidential history unfolded in New York.
Such prescient timing is beyond the scheduling prowess of any lecture committee: On the very day the first indictment of a sitting or former United States president was unsealed in district court in New York, the journalist most famous for thwarting abuse of presidential power delivered a free lecture in Des Moines.
Bob Woodward, one half of Woodward and Bernstein from the Watergate era and “All the President’s Men” and a standard bearer for “democracy dies in darkness” via his longtime employer the Washington Post, took the stage on the floor of a basketball arena in front of hundreds of people.
The threat of severe thunderstorms with occasional downpours didn’t deter the throng—including seemingly most of the journalists I know in central Iowa—from packing onto the bleachers of Drake University’s Knapp Center.
The event took on a tone of a solemn reverence for truth and accountability.
Woodward, 80, began his hourlong Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture discussing presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford from the signature era of his career. He didn’t utter Donald Trump’s name for a full 26 minutes, shortly before launching into questions.
Unsurprisingly, the first question addressed “the elephant in the room,” the indictment. (Trump has pled not guilty to all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.) Woodward called the day in Manhattan “a serious moment,” “a milestone,” “history,” and “the beginning of the accountability trail” for Trump.
A more intriguing question soon followed:
Should President Joe Biden pardon Trump for the good of the nation?
“There’s an original idea,” Woodward quipped. But he couldn’t imagine Trump swallowing such a pardon’s tacit admission of guilt.
The question seemed spurred in part by the first half of Woodward’s lecture. Back in 1974, he said, he was sure that Ford’s pardon of Nixon represented corruption—a deal cut to secure the presidency.
Twenty-five years later, Woodward decided he was wrong: What Ford did required courage, because he had “found that little piece of national interest” in the midst of a complicated, tragic drama.
Somebody else pressed Woodward on that point: But was Ford’s pardon truly beneficial in the long view? Had Nixon faced criminal prosecution, Trump supporters today couldn’t fixate on the “unprecedented” nature of this indictment?
Woodward stood by his assessment of Ford as magnanimous—adding that the pardon also preserved the secret White House tapes, an irrefutable historical record that became, the journalist said, “a tire iron around Nixon’s neck.”
Woodward emphasized the historical roots of today’s political polarization—which we can trace in part thanks to those tapes. Nixon was recorded on Dec. 14, 1972, in the White House telling Henry Kissinger, “Never forget, the press is the enemy.”
In Woodward’s words: “Hating was, and is, the problem in our politics now.”
This is a guy who knows a thing or two about letting presidents jabber away, often to their own detriment. He conducted seven interviews with Ford. He spent eight hours over nine months interviewing Trump. The journalist shared a valuable nugget of wisdom on interviewing that resonates with my own experience: “Be quiet and let the silence suck out the truth.”
Woodward’s ability to let his subjects fill uncomfortable silence has fueled 22 books—three of them on Trump.
Both Woodward and Drake President Marty Martin made clear the two rules for audience questions: They should be (1) short and (2) tough. The iconic journalist didn’t exactly answer all of them—such as whether a reporter should hold back revealing presidential interviews for his books versus publishing more immediately in the public interest.
Woodard responded to a question on the Trump-Russia Steele dossier by saying he considered it a “garbage document” from the start.
A more lighthearted moment courtesy of a gray-haired gentleman: “What are your feelings of a guy our age doing the job (of president)?”
“I have so many doctors,” Woodward riffed. “I called my cataract doctor and asked about my prostate.”
[Snare hit.]
“Does this happen often?” Wooward asked his eye doc.
“No, you’re the first,” the doc said.
[Second snare hit.]
Toward the end of questions, Woodward owned up to his mistakes in his coverage leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. He regretted that his reference in the 17th paragraph of a Post story—there was no “smoking-gun intelligence” on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—didn’t appear in the first paragraph, where it belonged.
“I got caught up in group think,” Woodward said.
“I should’ve been much more watchful and independent, which in the end is the job of the journalist.”
On this night, Woodward’s job had only begun at the end of his lecture. The line for signed books and selfies snaked around the arena floor.
Outside I heard the thunder of the passing storm—or maybe it was the more distant rumble of a storm still brewing in Manhattan and Florida.
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Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
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Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
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Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains, Washington, D.C.
Macey Spensley, The Midwest Creative, Davenport and Des Moines
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
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Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
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Great writeup!
Thanks Kyle. Do we know what our journalism schools are doing to better prepare future journalism to deal with misinformation, fake news, AI, etc. Do we know what our business schools are doing to teach our future leaders in the business community what roles they can play.