Getting Defensive at NSC, State
Bob Woodward is body armor in official Washington. He's protection against the verdict of history, since his insider books are usually the first attempt to explain the inner workings of any given Administration. You want to be on his good side; just ask Colin Powell. So when former General Jim Jones invited Woodward along on a trip to the war zones in late June, Jonathan Martin (substituting for Ben Smith) and others wisely spotted this as the General up-armoring against the rumors that he wasn't adapting too well as National Security Adviser. What's curious is that Hillary Clinton was attempting her own defensive maneuvers at about the same time, hoping to hire her former enforcer, Sid Blumenthal--an effort that was nuked by the Obama White House.
The interesting thing here is that there are no real policy disagreements among the Obama foreign policy players. By all accounts, they've been getting along just fine. But the Jones and Clinton moves may indicate some pre-emptive skittishness, a sense of--unjustified, I believe--insecurity on the part of the two principals.
Jones was going to have a problem adjusting to the hothouse politics of the West Wing, in any case. His military style was olympian and detached; two of his staffers, Mark Lippert and Denis McDonough, had extremely close relationships with the President, forged in the crucible of the 2008 campaign. It is still too soon to know if Jones is going to succeed in the job, but it seems clear that his friends--not just in the journalistic community, but also in the Administration--are concerned and rushing to his defense. In June, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, whose contacts with journalists are surgical, called the Washington Post's David Ignatius specifically to support Jones. Also in June, the Washington Post's Sally Quinn wrote a column warning any detractors not to mess with the General. The Woodward trip represented a tripling-down of Jones support among Washington Post stalwarts.
Ironically, the Jones rally came at a moment when the NSC staff--which Jones is reorganizing according to the geography of the military command structure--was being bolstered by the arrival Dennis Ross from State, who assumed the absolutely crucial Centcom portfolio. Ross had been pinched at State. He had been promised the Middle East from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan, but the appointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy--a last minute surprise to many at State--pretty much limited Ross's zone of operations to Iran. And even there he was pinched by the fact that the President is taking the lead role in determining the strategy for dealing with the Islamic Republic (And that State's Under Secretary for Political Affairs, William Burns, was handling the nuclear negotiations).
Ross seems to have jumped--he wasn't pushed--to the NSC during a time when not very much news was being made by Hillary Clinton or her stalwarts at State. One wonders whether the attempt to hire Blumenthal was an attempt to rectify that, to beef up her speech-writing and promotion shop, or a sign of nervousness on the Secretary's part. It certainly was a flaming red flag in the Obama White House. After all, Blumenthal's service to both Clintons has been (add: allegedly) marked by the free-range feeding of malicious gossip to journalists...which is why the White House immediate slam-dunked Blumenthal, in no uncertain terms. (It was an article of faith among the Obama campaign staff that Blumenthal was the source of scurrilous rumors about both Obamas in the spring of 2008.)
"I have no idea why she did that," said one Obama loyalist. "Her relationship with the President is excellent. She's doing a terrific job at State."
Again, the bottom line here is that everyone agrees about the policies--and that the policies have a good chance of succeeding. There is a good chance that this is merely background noise, the sort of gossip and jockeying that goes on in any Administration. But still...
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1
Thanks, Joe. Reading this verbatim, why should Woodward armorize / protect anyone or anything? If you literally mean “you want to be on his good side,” then that means he takes sides? Is journalism NOT supposed to do that? Or is this all about Bob Woodward[tm]? I guess I'm still remembering Cronkite's work, sigh.
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2
I guess I'm still remembering Cronkite's work, sigh.
Aren't we all, deconstructiva, aren't we all...
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3
I'll recognize progress when some of the principles actually admit that he was that good - NOT just interview those who talk about how good he was.
That's what they already do... just present different sides of an issue.
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4
Front page of Time.com: Who is the most trusted newsman in America after Cronkite's death? Coming in at #1 by far is Jon Stewart. Says it all doesn't it?
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4.1
Credit where credit's due – Brian Williams can deadpan a great line with the best of them. When he's Stewart's guest the Daily Show is at the top of its form – when he's a straight man (like on the NBC Evening News), not so much.
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5
Reading this verbatim, why should Woodward armorize / protect anyone or anything? If you literally mean “you want to be on his good side,” then that means he takes sides? Is journalism NOT supposed to do that? Or is this all about Bob Woodward[tm]?
I think you're trying to ask "Is Bob Woodward a human being with subjective biases?" I think we can safely say the answer is "yes." His narrative style of reporting, of course, will tend to exacerbate this problem.
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6
I'm afraid Woodward has come to fit the self-description of Ellis Redding, the Sage of Shawshank:
I couldn't hack it on the outside. Been in here too long. I'm an institutional man now.
His recent defense of his sellout publisher was the ultimate "AwS#!t," wiping out all the "Attaboys" he'd accumulated.
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7
Oh, gag me! Woodward is about as relevant as Bill Kristol, or Joke Line, for that matter.
It's just more blah, blah, blah from the Serious People. At least with Jon Stewart you know he understands why it's tragicomic.
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8
OT, but this is amazing: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html
"Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling."
...
"Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver's license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said."-
8.1
Rose, thanks for posting that. Unbelievable. This guy is one of my heroes. In his own home ... just boggles the mind.
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I'd add that this offers a wonderful counterpoint to Ross Douche-hat's column today.
And let's not forget Joe's Groundhog-Day sctick of rebutting nutters and condemning other nations for our own warped practices--that's simply more of the same, and I can't summon the resolve to call him out (my own sctick?)
OTOH, as Cincy points out, that poll (however scientific) is simply great news. As w/demographic #s spelling doom for the GOP long term, the younger generation(s) are increasingly rejecting the propaganda model of journalism. They will continue to embrace the likes of Stewart or Froomkin (i.e. those who like Cronkite are unafraid of illustrating reality). Whether it's a plummeting viewership or readership, the corp powers that be are unwilling to acknowledge one simple truth--news consumers are sick & tired of being lied to. They're trying all manner of dog & pony shows (this blog among them), but they're still peddling the same snake oil.
The question is when will the networks abandon their "news" programming entirely. Again, I have no idea what replaces it (cable is even more loathsome), but as with WaPo or Time, sometimes the aristocracy simply has to be deposed. Worry about what's to come later.
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9
Thanks for the post, It reinforces the notion of how thoroughly corrupt and broken our political system is.
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The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.
Naw, really?
He showed his driver's license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.
How can you trust a picture when they all look the same?
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10.1
What is the Dave Chapelle line? He broke in and put up pictures of his family everywhere.
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11
From WaPo's "Corrections" on Friday, July 17, 2009
-- A July 16 Style article incorrectly said that ABC's Jake Tapper used Twitter to apologize to NBC's David Gregory for sending a critical remark of Gregory's to the office of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. Tapper apologized by phone.
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11.1
It's informative that Tapper felt an obligation to apologize to a fellow Villager, but not to the public for his breach of journalistic ethics.
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(It was an article of faith among the Obama campaign staff that Blumenthal was the source of scurrilous rumors about both Obamas in the spring of 2008.)
What is it with Democrats? There are two kinds of people who are beyond the pale: (a) Genuine liberals, aka DFHs and (b) Democrats who have crossed them in the past. Republicans get a free pass for all their swift-boating.
Look, I would get it if Obama wanted to hold a grudge against Blumenthal if he was consistent. But can any sane person argue that anything that came out of the Clinton camp was WORSE than what came out of the McCain camp? Of course not. And Obama would bust out the bipartisan kneepads for John "that one" McCain in a heartbeat.
This isn't just about Obama. The Clintons (and the PUMAs) have been just as irrational in their selective animosity. How annoying was it to watch Bill Clinton pall around with Bush pere and defend Bush fils on Iraq and Katrina? How annoying was it to watch Hillary suck up to Murdoch and Scaife during the primaries even as the PUMAs blamed their fellow Democrats for every slander against her?
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13
Maybe it's my age, but I think what astonished me most about Gates' arrest - wow, that will just never stop sounding weird - is that he's pretty old to be profiled so blatantly. And while I don't know Boston I can reasonably assume that Gates lives in a "bastion of liberalism."
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14
Rose, cops go into bastions of liberalism because that's where the q@eers, n*ggers and w@tbacks are, also people with educations. And cops loves them beatin' some of those. Example:
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/06/san-diego-sheriff-calls-for-probe-into-pepper-spray-use-at-political-event.html
.
There's only one thing cops hate more than non heteros and non whites, and that's the college educated. -
15
Oh, gag me! Woodward is about as relevant as Bill Kristol, or Joke Line, for that matter.
Amen.
Sold their souls for
rock and rollinsider status and bucks. (I doubt Kristol ever had a soul, come to think of it.)
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[...] Jim Jones , NSC , President Obama , State Department , United States Leave a Comment In this piece over at the swampland, Joe Klein delves into the inner workings of the relationship between General Jones at the NSC and [...]
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