All The President's Men

For the past six weeks, my WEM book club has been reading All The President's Men (ATPM), Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's story of how they uncovered and exposed Watergate.  In 1972, I was 5 so this political event isn't embedded in my psyche.  However, politics hasn't changed much at all, despite the times.

I do know that reading this book was laborious - the cast of characters took up three pages.  It was hard at times to keep them all straight, including which was Bernstein (college dropout) and Woodward (Naval officer).  The unnamed sources Bernstein and Woodward used were just as hard, if not impossible, to keep straight.  However, it was quite an exciting adventure, in a cloak and dagger sort of way.

Reading about the process the two went through to keep extensive notes and record meeting dialogues, track down people who were willing to talk, getting in trouble with a judge for asking grand jurists about the grand jury testimony, traveling to Florida and California on the spur of the moment on the hope of getting information and putting the pieces together was quite enlightening.  Being allowed to be a fly on the page, so to speak, as to the editorial meetings and the writing process and the eventual fear that gripped the reporters when it all started to come out was not something most books give their readers a chance to do.

There were a lot of familiar names mentioned in this book: Helen Thomas, Bill Moyers, G. Gordon Liddy (how did he ever get a radio talk show?), Henry Kissinger, Pat Buchanan, Robert Dole, Morton Halperin (father of Game Change author Mark Halperin), and Brit Hume.

The one character I could connect with was Chuck Colson and only because Book Club had read his book, Born Again earlier.  The Colson in ATPM was not the same Colson I met in his autobiography; a religious conversion experience will completely change a man. I find that intriguing and it raises the questions of how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves.  Colson passed away in April, 2012; ironically, the Washington Post published a four-page, fair article on Colson's life.

Bob Woodward has continued to write about politics and politicians.  He has two books out on President Obama, The Price of Politics and Obama's Wars.  These might be good to read before the election to inform your voting.  I have not read either one.

If you care to read more about it, the Washington Post has an extensive website devoted to Watergate. Once I watch the movie, I'll revisit this post to share.