5 min read Last updated: October 13, 2024 | 9:32 PM IST
Written by A.O. Scott
war
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Author: Bob Woodward
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Number of pages: 435
Price: $32
Although it is not listed among the enumerated powers of the American president, one of the modern expectations of the presidency is that Bob Woodward will write at least one book about your administration. Over the past 30 years, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each won two awards, and presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump each achieved trilogies.
As a senator and vice president, Joe Biden was a supporting character in many of these books, including Trump’s last book, which Woodward co-authored with Robert Costa and covered the 2020 election and the January 6 riot. He was also a full-fledged co-star in “Danger”. At the Capitol. Now that the war has happened, Biden has his own chronicle. This is a strange and self-divisive book. It celebrates its subject matter more than most previous books, but it’s less confident in its own story, and even though it’s busy with cases, it’s strangely out of place in the chaos of the world as we know it. disconnected.
The notoriously lonely presidency is anything but lonely in Woodward’s presentation. In each book, the commander-in-chief is surrounded by ministers, aides, and advisors. Some of these are Woodward’s sources, but he does not say which ones. His method, described in a memo shortly after the end of the war, was to conduct interviews “based on the fundamental journalistic principle of ‘deep context,'” which means that “all information may be used, but , meaning that we do not disclose who provided the information.
“At the heart of good governance is teamwork,” Woodward writes, and readers will spend considerable time with members of Biden’s national security team, including Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken, and the secretaries of defense and state. will be spent. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Vice President Kamala Harris.
They and their colleagues and subordinates lend the story a lively, procedural efficiency. Woodward criticizes them in barbershop prose: “Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain, 59, with dark brown hair and a friendly, enthusiastic demeanor.” Blinken, “5 feet 10 inches tall, with beautiful waves of hair that was once brown and now gray.” If this were a movie, these people would be played by solid, second-rate character actors.
But most of the time, Biden will share the stage with other heads of state. Their hairstyles remain in the public record. For example, the brilliant Boris Johnson is simply described as “a member of the British Conservative Party and a graduate of the prestigious Eton School and Oxford University.” “Fame” in this sentence refers to Woodwardian’s pure gold.
The war begins in 1989, when Mr. Trump, a 42-year-old wheel dealer, sits down for a chat with Mr. Woodward and his Watergate reporting partner, Carl Bernstein. A transcript of that interview, unearthed in 2023, reveals “the origins of Trumpism in Trump’s own words,” according to Woodward. Then and now, “Trump’s personality was focused on winning, fighting, and surviving.”
The action stretches from early 2021 through this summer, from the hectic weeks before Biden’s inauguration to the swirling aftermath of his withdrawal from the 2024 race. The war is not primarily about electoral politics. (Tim Walz is mentioned once, but J.D. Vance is never mentioned.) Nor is it about the issues that polls suggest are most important to voters. There’s a short chapter on immigration and some mention of inflation, but not much about abortion, crime, or climate change. There is little mention of the judicial branch of government. The Legislature is made up primarily of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is seen primarily serving as President Trump’s golfing partner.
Woodward is not interested in partisanship or ideology. His subject is high politics, the exercise of the highest forms of power, primarily involving government leaders and their lieutenants conversing on the telephone, often swearing. Leadership is a matter of character, and a leader’s temperament is tested above all in the field of foreign policy. In ‘War’, Biden’s presidency will depend on how he deals with Ukraine and West Asia – at times threatened and, in Woodward’s candid opinion, ultimately vindicated. –.
In the case of Ukraine, after a “stunning intelligence coup by the crown jewels of the U.S. intelligence community” revealed Putin’s war plans, the regime needed to convince its allies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of the seriousness of the threat. there were. As Russian forces moved toward Kiev, their mission was to strengthen Ukraine militarily and diplomatically while avoiding direct involvement of NATO and U.S. forces and avoiding the threat of potential nuclear escalation. .
Even if you knew what the outcome would be, this is a harrowing and nail-biting event. But the problem is, we don’t really know. Since the completion of this book, Russia has again gone on the offensive against Ukraine. The conflict in West Asia has expanded to include Hezbollah and Iran, and Biden and his team devote many pages to trying to stop it. Meanwhile, the election campaigns of Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are proceeding at breakneck speed. Three weeks after “War” is published on Oct. 15, voters will provide the raw material for a sequel.
Woodward specializes in real-time suspense, but he doesn’t write cliffhangers. His impulse, his gift, is to impose an arc and a lesson on the chaos and breadth of very recent history. This time, his conclusion is clear. “Donald Trump is not only unfit to be president, he is unfit to lead our country,” he wrote. By contrast, “Biden and his team will be largely studied in history as an example of stable, purposeful leadership.” Those rulings sound authoritative. They also sound hopeful.
The reviewers are general critics of the New York Times Book Review.
First published: October 13, 2024 | 9:32 PM IST
