Bob Woodward - Liar or Fool? - Why Choose? and Open Thread

"Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time" - Gang of Four

[oddjob reminded me of this one in the previous comment thread.]

- Every time I have watched Bob Woodward on television over the last twenty or so years, my usual reaction has been "this idiot brought down a president?"  I then think either that Bernstein was grossly underrated or that this is the luckiest sonuvabtich in the history of journalism.  Because he seems exceedingly dense, credulous, slightly slow on the uptake, a guy whose ignorance is only exceeded by his undeserved sense of self-regard.    Woodward's claim that he was threatened by the White House for his ridiculous reporting on the sequester has been quite the amusing story.   But what really cracked me up was the right wingers who seem to think that Woodward is some sort of liberal hero and that only our blind loyalty for Obama is behind the denunciation of his epic dishonesty.  The man who wrote Maestro for fuck's sake.     And boy, that Gene Sperling knows how to deliver a blood-chilling threat:

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.

Really, how can anyone take seriously a man who claims that this is a threat?

- Erik Loomis is frustrated that the AFL-CIO and building trades unions are supporting the Keystone Pipeline. 

I understand the tough situation that Keystone creates for organized labor. A union’s job is to protect the interests of its members, including keeping them employed, all too rare today. But in the early 21st century, with organized labor in deep decline, does it make sense to promote short-term job growth at the cost of telling the thousands of people who care deeply about a variety of progressive causes, including climate change, that organized labor is not an ally?

Does he really not understand who elects the local and international (all of these unions have Canadian members) officers of these unions?  Hint -- the guys who are looking to work on the pipeline and thinking about their next job.  Local union officers by law must stand for election every three years, international officers every five years.  Can you imagine being the head of a building trades union and telling the members that the union is passing up on the opportunity for lucrative work in order to forge greater bonds with other progressives? -- all of whom no doubt show the same reciprocal respect for the concerns of union members by buying only union-made domestic cars (no Priuses kids), shopping at union grocery stores (stay out of Whole Foods), and hiring only union contractors in their homes.  [I keep thinking of one of my clients bringing one of our meetings to a quick close because he and his fellow union members wanted to get to a public hearing about a nuke plant "before the Sahara Club got there."]  If the AFL-CIO deserted the building trades unions in this cause, they would be risking further disaffiliations at a time of grave weakness.  This is a case of institutions being accountable to their memberships.  If other progressives can't understand that then there really isn't much hope of alliances.

What's going on with you?     

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

I figure just about everything that needs to be said about Woodward's self-destruction has been said many times over the past few days. With any luck, he will now disappear off of everybody's radar screens. Even the wingnuts will lose interest in him soon.

[oddjob]

[oddjob reminded me of this one in the previous comment thread.]

The reference to trains running on time was nancy's, not mine.

[oddjob]

I think Jonathan Chait probably assesses Woodward correctly:

"To reconcile Woodward’s journalistic reputation with the weird pettiness of his current role, one has to grasp the distinction between his abilities as a reporter and his abilities as an analyst. Woodward was, and remains, an elite gatherer of facts. But anybody who has seen him commit acts of political commentary on television has witnessed a painful spectacle. As an analyst, Woodward is a particular kind of awful — a Georgetown Wise Man reliably and almost invariably mouthing the conventional wisdom of the Washington Establishment.

His more recent books often compile interesting facts, but how Woodward chooses to package those facts has come to represent a barometric measure of a figure’s standing within the establishment. His 1994 account of Bill Clinton’s major budget bill, which in retrospect was a major success, told a story of chaos and indecision. He wrote a fulsome love letter to Alan Greenspan, “Maestro,” at the peak of the Fed chairman’s almost comic prestige. In 2003, when George W. Bush was still a decisive and indispensable war leader, Woodward wrote a heroic treatment of the Iraq War. After Bush’s reputation had collapsed, Woodward packaged essentially the same facts into a devastating indictment. Woodward’s book on the 2011 debt negotiations was notable for arguing that Obama scotched a potential deficit deal. The central argument has since been debunked by no less a figure than Eric Cantor, who admitted to Ryan Lizza that he killed the deal."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/what-the-hell-happened-to-bob-woodward.html#

Hat tip, Sully.

[Sir Charles]

Oops, sorry nancy.

[nancy]

Oh, not to worry Sir C. All that multi-tasking will do that.

***

[I keep thinking of one of my clients bringing one of our meetings to a quick close because he and his fellow union members wanted to get to a public hearing about a nuke plant "before the Sahara Club got there."] That is poignant. But thus has it ever been.

Or, why Yglesias made me want to spew today vis-a-vis sequestration: It must be nice never to worry about where your next meal is coming from.

[Crissa]

Why do the unions care?

Well, the pipeline as built so far had fourteen spills in the first year of operation.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aswift/the_first_keystone_tar_sands_p.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2013/keystone-xl-pipeline-03-01-2013.html

Is that something the union wants to be representative of?

There's no guarantee of union jobs here, either.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

The unions, which have been reeling from five years of recession in the building and construction industry, are interested in securing a job that will employ tens of thousands of their members at very good wages and benefits. Mega projects like this are always attractive to both the membership and the leadership for the hours and money that they assure.

Keystone will absolutely be a union project. My firm works with the union that will likely have the largest contingent of workers on the job and we know that this work will be done by them.

The safety of the pipeline has to be compared to other modes of transporting oil and coal. Of course they are not completely fool proof, but they are statistically far safer for people and the environment than transportation of oil by rail, ship, and truck.

[low-tech cyclist]

nancy - all too true. That's one of the reasons I continue to appreciate Krugman.

For all that he's got a cushy gig - tenured professorship at Princeton, column in the NY Times - he's never lost sight of what's happening to typical Americans at ground level, and is quite outraged at the immorality of the attitude from 30,000 feet that what happens 'down there' doesn't really matter.

Just one for-instance:

Think about that: he’s saying that ordinary workers and families who have nothing to do with financial speculation should suffer severely — because that’s what happens in a recession — in order to curb the irrational exuberance of a handful of incredibly well-paid financial industry types...Bear in mind that this is what everyone saying that we should tighten monetary policy now because of bubbles is really saying[.]

[Crissa]

That's the problem, I don't think it is a union project. Much of the line has already been constructed. Are you telling me all the shoddy work done in right-to-work states was a union job?

That's the problem - they're advocating for things that might employ someone in the trade, without regard to whether it's union or not, whether the job was done right or not.

At that point, they're not a union, they're just another crappy corporate lobbyist.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

As far as I know all of the work to date on the pipeline has been done union, even in the right to work states. Typically this work is handled by guys who travel all over the country doing such work. It's pretty specialized.

Just because the work is done union, does not mean you aren't going to have issues with a pipeline of this size and using such high pressure. There's a lot of parts and occasionally such parts fail. It's not a sign of bad workmanship on the pipeline.

[Crissa]

It's not a sign of bad workmanship that it's spring 14 major leaks?

Wouldn't that mean it shouldn't be done, if they can't do it?

I don't see why exactly I should support a fucked up union which would support a half-assed job that fails safety checks in the name of 'jobs'. That's not a union I care about, it's just a corporate cheer-leader.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

Again, I looked at the incident reports and the leaks do not appear to have caused significant environmental damage. The issues caused by them need to be compared to the leaks and spills incurred in transporting oil by other means, because oil is going to continue to be a major fuel source for the foreseeable future. It is not going to be wished away.

As for being corporate cheerleaders, who the hell is going to employ our members? The building trades are actually a lot less dependent on large corporations for employment than most unions -- the vast majority of contractors being fairly small businesses. But jobs of this magnitude and other major infrastructure projects are going to be handled by larger companies because they are the only ones who can finance such work and handle the size of payroll necessary to get things done.

It's all well and good to say you don't want pipeliners or rig welders to have jobs -- but don't expect them to care much about your concerns then.

[nancy]

Yes, we'd all like union workers back at work, as much as possible. But at what cost? I have to say that most people do not seem to understand what will happen with Keystone at the point of origin of this project, and those ecological implications, even should all safety down-pipeline concerns be addressed in perpetuity. Which, of course, they cannot be. Stegner, Reisner, Abbey et al. Water, water, water in the arid North American West needs to be considered with this massive permanent "effort." Once upon a time, we had some engineers commenting here. Would love to see some of their hydrology assessments.

Mightn't we do a decent nationwide rail effort instead, in order to put the trade-skilled to work? [Sigh]

[paula]

This sheds a new light on the quality of reporting and relative journalistic importance of The Atlantic:
http://bit.ly/13Exp75

[Crissa]

I don't want guillotine builders to have jobs, either, how nasty am I?

They can build bridges and roads and buildings, and Keystone XL won't make any of those more likely to happen. So they're cheerleading companies leading them to their doom.

So I say: FUck'em.