Journalist Jeff Greenfield, writing in the September 17 Politico magazine, somehow can't figure out the real reason "Why Woodward's 'Fear' Flopped in Washington." Greenfield makes a light attempt to find out the reason for the flop but seems to be unable to see the all too obvious.
So let us join Greenfield as he stumbles around while ignoring the very large elephant in the room whose stink is something that liberals don't want to dwell on, which is that Woodward couldn't find evidence of Trump-Russia collusion:
Beyond a considerable boost to the profit margins of Simon & Schuster, Bob Woodward’s Fear has had all the impact of what Senator Everett Dirksen described as “a snowflake upon the bosom of the Potomac River.” The response in Washington from President Donald Trump’s allies, and even from his longtime critics, has been a virtual shrug. Sure, cable news has struck a tone of continual hysteria—Red alert! DEFCON 1! Summon the panels!—but that is decidedly normal in Trump’s Washington. Why doesn’t anyone seem to care? Fundamentally, because, like Sherlock Holmes’ dog that did not bark in the night, the political and journalistic universe has known in general just about everything that Fear describes anecdotally.
The virtual shrug because Fear did not deliver what liberals were praying for: Evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Got that, Jeff? I know it hurts that the one hailed as the greatest investigative journalist was unable to find such collusion but that is the bottom line.
Since the supposedly-illustrious Woodward couldn't find collusion, he had to make do with many of the same themes already plowed by Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury. The major difference is that Wolff comes off as clownish while Woodward tries to project an air of feigned gravitas. The good news is that due to their alliterative titles, both books could be packaged together in a gossipy single volume: Fire and Fury and Fear.
Liberal interviewers very noticeably avoided asking Woodward the collusion question that should have been front and center. Instead it took a conservative radio show interviewer, Hugh Hewitt, to ask Woodward the question that dares not cross the lips of liberals even though that was secretly their biggest disappointment about his book:
HUGH HEWITT: ...Did you, Bob Woodward, hear anything in your research in your interviews that sounded like espionage or collusion?
BOB WOODWARD: I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard. And so you know, there we are. We’re going to see what Mueller has, and Dowd may be right. He has something that Dowd and the president don’t know about, a secret witness or somebody who has changed their testimony. As you know, that often happens, and that can break open or turn a case.
HEWITT: But you’ve seen no collusion?
WOODWARD: I have not.
Woodward just did not deliver the goods that liberals so desperately expected. Woodward also provided a rather melodramatic excuse as to why he found no collusion in response to a question on CSPAN recently:
It's critical the real answer to collusion is in Russia and as a reporter if I went there I almost certainly would not come back.
Does the other Bob, Bob Mueller, have your permission to use that excuse when his team also finds no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, Bob?
