Bob Woodward's “War” is, I'll say it, good

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At this late point in Bob Woodward's career, it would be possible to publish an entertaining anthology of the negative reviews of his books. Although there is an ongoing debate about the journalistic merits of Woodward's reporting style, he undoubtedly managed to get the best out of the likes of Joan Didion, Christopher Hitchens and Jack Shafer.

A few years ago I wrote to Woodward hoping to get his help on a story I was covering. I decided to woo him with a thick layer of flattery, which I thought was the spirit of Bob Woodward. To my embarrassment, he replied that he was having a hard time reconciling my sycophantic writing with the negative review of his book State of denial in which I published The New York Times in 2006, “which strongly comes to the opposite conclusion.” His response suggests that he might be the ideal editor of the anthology.

Over the years, my criticism of Woodward has waned significantly. It's not that the complaints about his works are unwarranted: he recites his sources' version of events with excessive reverence; he trumpets every report, no matter how trivial; He narrates scenes without pausing to put them into context. But when he is in his most serious condition – and Warhis new book about President Joe Biden's navigation of conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, may be the most serious of his career — he exudes an almost atavistic obsession with the gritty details of foreign policy. Woodward is the most gifted sensationalist journalist of his generation, but it is his abiding desire to be known as a serious human being that earns him the most meaningful reporting.

War comes to this fertile place, but it starts in a promising way. In the prologue, Woodward recalls that Carl Bernstein met Donald Trump at a New York dinner party in 1989. Trump exclaimed, “Wouldn't it be amazing if Woodward and Bernstein interviewed Donald Trump?” The journalist duo who brought down Richard Nixon agreed to see him the next day.

Last year, Woodward went to a storage facility and began searching through his files in search of the lost interview. In a box full of old newspaper clippings he found a battered envelope containing the transcript. Unfortunately, this is the most interesting part of the story. Woodward lets his reader read pages of Trump’s banal thoughts: “I’m a big loyalist. I believe in loyalty to people.” Since Woodward and Bernstein asked the questions, the conversation is obviously steeped in history. This is a silly, tangential start to a book dedicated to the foreign policy of the Biden presidency.

Kamala Harris' face takes center stage on the cover, which features a range of faces of world leaders. It's another misdirection, because the vice president plays only a small role in the story. Still, Harris comes off well in her cameo appearances. She asks questions diligently in the Situation Room. She plays the lead role in phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him about civilian casualties in Gaza. However, there are no cases in which she disagrees with Biden on the content.

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The most telling Harris moment comes toward the end of the book. One of Biden's friends asks her, “Could you please talk to the president more than to him?” Your president really loves you.” Her boss's biggest disappointment was that she didn't write or call her. In response to the friend's request, Harris joked about her strongest bond with the president: “He knows I'm the only person who knows how to pronounce the word correctly wanker.” It’s a really funny exchange and insightful in its own way.

But these are just MacGuffins: Please Beltway superfans. At its core, Woodward's book is about diplomacy. Aside from the various bits and pieces about Trump – most frightening of all is the former president's ongoing cronyism with Vladimir Putin, an allegation Trump's campaign denies – there is a serious story of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. I have reported these stories myself and can't say I found any errors in his report. If anything, I'm shamelessly jealous of how he managed to tell a few big stories that I missed. One of the book's most impressive sections shows Putin pondering the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine – and all the quiet diplomacy that kept him from the brink. Newspapers at the time hinted at this threat, but Woodward reveals the backstory in compelling and chilling detail. (Jon Finer, the vice chairman of the National Security Council, says Putin's decision to use the atomic bomb seemed like a “coin flip.”) When Biden worries about the possibility of nuclear escalation, he's not just remembering his youth the beginnings of the Cold War. He faces a very real risk in the present.

Unlike his predecessors, Biden was suspicious of Woodward. Biden is old enough to remember how one of his books helped derail Bill Clinton's first term and appears to have chosen not to participate in that story or Woodward's previous book. Danger. Since the president refuses access, he appears lifeless. It's not like he's going out to lunch – according to Woodward's reports, he's mastered his skills. There's just no real insight into his psychology. His decision to withdraw from the 2024 race came too close to the book's publication date for Woodward to cover the process that led the president to withdraw. He has little to say about the most fascinating decision in recent political history.

But in some ways, Biden and Woodward are made for each other. These two octogenarians are both incarnations of a bygone era in Washington, when foreign policy was the establishment's shared obsession. Even if Woodward doesn't find Biden personally interesting, he is genuinely fascinated by the president's conversations with Netanyahu and Putin. These aren't the bits and pieces of reporting that move copies, but they're clearly what he values. In his afterword, he suggests how much he enjoyed reporting on “the genuine good faith efforts of the President and his core national security team to use the levers of executive power responsibly and in the national interest.”

Despite his fixation on the basics, Woodward fails to answer or even ask some of the bigger questions about Biden's foreign policy: Could he have done more to strengthen Ukraine? Could he have pressured Israel to accept a ceasefire? But Woodward comes to a verdict on the presidency that strikes me as measured and fair: “Based on the evidence now available, I believe that President Biden and this team will be widely studied by history as an example of consistent and purposeful leadership.” Despite that Many of this administration's mistakes, I expect Woodward's judgment will stand the test of time, and that none of the reviews from War is intended for the anthology.