Gerald Ford and the Woodward Tape

I cannot help noticing that Bob Woodward barely waited until Gerald Ford died to release a tape of the former President sounding out his misgivings about the Iraq War as well as President Ford sharp criticism of his former Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney, and the discredited Don Rumsfeld. Ford apparently was candid in this sub rosa interview about Bush "going around hell and damn nation freeing people" when the national interest might have dictated a less militant course against Saddam.

All very fine and well. I share many of the late President's misgiving about their conduct of the war, but my beef isn't with Bush the Younger on this occasion. It is with Mr. Woodward.

Earlier this year, Bob Woodward I did a disservice to his credibility and to the duty of a journalist to give an honest assessment of what he is writing about. By withholding his subjective and strong criticism of the current administration foreign affairs in Iraq until AFTER he published his third and last book on the war, "State of Denial", he clearly traded access for full honesty.

Or was it just a coincidence that the strong criticism only came after his VIP access to White House honchos stopped?

The opportunism continued; Woodward couldn't wait to get the Ford tape out to the country to hype some new book he probably has in the hopper. Couldn't he have waited until the subject of the interview was honored in Washington and then buried? It's not like such opinions about the conduct of the Iraq war were particularly needed right at this juncture; millions of Americans have already seen the negative results of Bush's war. If Ford was that exercised about the conduct of Cheney and Rumsfeld and the sitting Chief Executive, he could have made his thoughts known publicly in 2004, when the tapes for the Woodward book were first made.

So whose purposes were served by this quick-time revelation? Bob's, that's who. Is Woodward more concerned with selling himself on Larry King and grabbing headlines then he is about common decency? I think so. I wonder if Ford imagined his misgivings would come out quite so fast after his death.