If the US public were shocked by tales of Donald Trump’s dishonesty, self-love and general ignorance, it was not enough to stop it from electing him. We knew who Trump was before he became the Republican nominee. Since he became president, we have learnt more. With each fresh account — the most sensational coming from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury earlier this year — our capacity for outrage drops. At some point we hit a nadir of impotent titillation. Trump is epically unsuited to be president but there is nothing apparently that anyone can do about it.
It is a misfortune of Bob Woodward’s timing that his book is packed with shocking material that by this point fails to shock. Woodward’s advantage is his brand. He has written numerous books since he made his name as the Washington Post’s investigative reporter who with his colleague Carl Bernstein uncovered Watergate. Some of them, such as State of Denial, Bush at War, enriched our view of a presidency. Others, such as Maestro, his paean to Alan Greenspan, do not stand the test of time. Woodward’s other advantage is his method. He persuades insiders to talk to him out of fear that other insiders will shape the narrative to their disadvantage. It is a tried and tested method. Those who refuse to co-operate tend to come off worse.
In the case of Fear, Trump himself famously did not speak to the author, though he claimed he had wanted to. The president comes off badly from almost every anecdote Woodward relates. So does Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the presidential election. By contrast, John Dowd, the president’s former personal lawyer, emerges as a smart operator with a knack for playing both Trump and Mueller. Fear has more verbatim quotes from Dowd than all the remaining characters combined. Guess which one spoke for hours and hours to Woodward? Others who seemed to have co-operated extensively include Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and self-appointed Lenin of the Alt-Right, Reince Priebus, Trump’s belittled first chief of staff, and Gary Cohn, his first chief economic adviser. Each comes off as savvy, articulate and at times even principled.