All the president’s con man?

Bob Woodward’s recent flap reveals a grotesquely swollen ego fed by 40 years of hero worship. Max Holland asks: why is this man an icon?

LEGENDARY US journalist Bob Woodward has been at the centre of a huge political debate. The occasion: his very public argument with White House senior official Gene Sperling, in which Woodward left the impression that Sperling had somehow tried to intimidate him — only to see this accusation undermined by the release of an email exchange in which the pair sounded rather conciliatory.

Almost all the commentary about this flap fits neatly under the heading, “What the Hell Happened to Bob Woodward?” But posing that question, as New York magazine did recently, implies a transformation that never occurred. Woodward is the same now as he ever was. His misrepresentation of his interaction with Sperling is only the latest in a long string of questionable journalistic episodes.