Can Bob Woodward take another scalp? He took Richard Nixon's by his relentless reporting of Watergate (with Carl Bernstein, Judge Sirica, Sam Ervin, Howard Baker, etc ). Democrats fighting the mid term elections as a vote for or against Bush pray he has done something similar with his new book State of Denial.
Dream on. The Democrats are so confused about Iraq, terror, Afghanistan, they just can't exploit the vulnerabilities of an unpopular President and his grossly dysfunctional team.
Woodward's book should be a gift to them. He all but accuses the President of lying, burying the facts as well as the bodies. Republicans inhaled deeply of Woodward's previous two books on the war because they boosted Bush as a clear-eyed man of courage firmly in command of a loyal team in standing up against the bad guys. A man not afraid to make the American people face the brutal realities of terrorism. The Democrats found bits they liked in Woodward 1 and 2, but not much.
The new book, for which Bush did not give an interview unlike the earlier books, documents a very different story based on Woodward's interviews with 200 administration insiders. Woodward slams into the White House for a Watergate style cover up. He does not use that term, but it adds up to a suppression actually worse than Watergate's fifth rate burglary. The joint chiefs sent the White House an intelligence report predicting that the insurgency will get worse in 2007 . It was stamped secret. Then the defense department made a public report saying the opposite, that "violent action will begin to wane in 2007".
Woodward is very effective on television. He looks straight to camera, juts his handsome jaw and says: "Now there's public and then there's private. But what they did they did so with the private. They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know...It's the oldest story in the coverage of government, the failure to tell the truth."
Woodward also has great dish. He reports that Henry Kissinger is back in favour and suggests Kissinger will want to go on fighting the Vietnam war. His detail of in-fighting between Secretary of State Condi Rice and the Defense Secretary is piquant because both of them deserve the whoopee cushion that Karl Rove rejoiced in planting in Cabinet meetings: Rumsfeld for his arrogance in tearing up State Department plans for post-invasion Iraq, for failing to commit enough US troops to grab Osama in his Tora Bora cave, and for his "what insurgency?...stuff happens" blindness; head prefect Rice for being fast asleep at the switch as national security adviser before 9/11, still focused on her Phd thesis expertise about the menace of the Soviet Union but all too active in propagating the notion that Saddam was close to having an atomic bomb, despite evidence to the contrary. From Woodward, she emerges as even more of a presidential enabler who cannot stand up to the big boys, Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's something else you can forget - Rice as a presidential candidate.
So why can't the Democrats count on getting control of the Senate or even the House? It is not as if the rest of the Republican record smells sweet. It is one of the most corrupt Congresses, and that's saying a lot. And 59% of all voters polled a few weeks ago polled don't like the way Bush is dealing with the war.
The trouble is they don't have any confidence the Democrats would do any better. President Clinton blasted an interviewer on the right-inclined Fox News for suggesting that he ducked too many chances to kill Osama, but Bush has made headway on the stump portraying them as a party of cut-and-run cowards. And while the public hates the way the war is going, they have bought into the idea that Iraq and terrorism will get worse if the coalition pulls out or sets a date for withdrawal as leading Democrats advocate. My guess is that the Americans would follow someone like John McCain who would rather commit the resources to finish the job - another 200,000 troops - than muddle on into more death and humiliation.
And there's another factor for the midterms. Almost 70% of the Republicans approve the way Bush is running the war, incredible as that may seem. . Woodward's revelations may shave a few points or two off that, but not enough I think to offset an on-the-ground reality: Republicans at the base have more cash and a better infrastructure. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean is working hard to reshape the Democratic machine, but it still has a wheel off and none of the drivers struggling to get hands on the wheel knows quite where to go.