Thoughts on the presidency

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning icons of investigative reporting, spent some time Thursday evening at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin bringing some of their thoughts and experiences to hundreds of people in attendance. 

The duo spent about 90 minutes discussing their decades-spanning work as investigative journalists, grounding much of the conversation in the lessons the American presidency, media and public took away from the Watergate scandal that eventually led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

They recalled their experiences as two young reporters in their late 20s at the Washington Post, rehashing anecdotes that range from the 1970s to just a few weeks ago when Woodward obtained a classified copy of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s report to President Obama calling for a surge of troops to Afghanistan within the next 12 months to prevent a potential military catastrophe there.

It was in this vein that the two veteran reporters weighed in on some of the issues facing the current administration and the tremendous pressures that typically fall on presidential shoulders.

“The fatigue of the presidency,” Woodward said, recalling a conversation he had with George W. Bush in May 2008, “is something that will do it in.”

In the years since Nixon’s resignation, Bernstein and Woodward said, other administrations have come and gone, each with its own successes and follies.

Overall, they said, some things in Washington have changed for the better.

Others have changed for the worst.

Bernstein said the various gears and cranks — the combination of the press, Congress and the other public entities that contributed to the justice served after Watergate’s exposure — have faltered somewhat in recent years, leaving the country with a diminished ability to hold its leaders accountable. 

One of the evening’s recurring themes was the character of America’s presidents and the varying degrees of secrecy to which each administration has operated.

Many of the presidents beginning with and since Nixon, Bernstein said, have fought to keep White House business veiled in “unjustified secrecy,” which he said has been a common thread in the Oval Office’s tapestry — from Nixon’s Watergate to President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater to President George W. Bush’s interrogation policies.

Also, the two compared and contrasted George W. Bush’s legacy with that of Nixon’s, who made tremendous mistakes in how he handled the media — lessons they said Bush seemed to have overlooked.

Bernstein said the two men were alike in that they both had character flaws that led to their being not “up to the job for various reasons” but, nonetheless, carried out actions on grounds they believed were “morally infallible,” despite the dubious legality of some of their policies. 

Woodward agreed that Bush was, like Nixon, not a particularly good fit for the job, but he argued Bush’s demeanor was not as inherently abusive to power as that of Nixon, who Woodward said used his power as a means to subvert political opponents.

He added Bush, on the other hand, did things that he genuinely believed were right, which was not always the case for Nixon.

“Hate was the poison that destroyed Nixon,” Woodward said. “It was the piston that drove his administration.”

Returning to the current administration, Bernstein and Woodward both said Obama’s White House appears to be more open to public discourse and feedback on his potential actions, but they reiterated that it is very difficult to get an accurate and reliable depiction of Obama’s tendencies so early in his administration.

“It looks a certain way,” Woodward said, “and it may be something quite different.”