Rage by Bob Woodward

Rage
By Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, 2020
David Murphy

Given President Trump’s vocabulary and incontinence of the mouth, Bob Woodard is unlikely to ever find himself grasping for dramatic monosyllabic titles to books about this administration. His first book on the Trump presidency, Fear: Trump in the White House, sold over one million copies and its title was out of a remark from then candidate Trump in an interview with Woodward and journalist Robert Costa: “Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.” And the title for this second book, Rage, is from a comment in one of seventeen interviews Woodward conducted with the president between December 2019 and July 2020: “I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have. I don’t know if that’s an asset or a liability, but whatever it is I do.”

Trump’s attempt at introspection aside, this can, in fact, be a difficult book to rage at. On the one hand, at this late date, rage at Trump’s behavior is often akin to being thrown into a conniption over the conduct of a clown, and on the other, Rage itself is an unbearably stale read. Now, sure, nobody is buying Woodward’s books to enjoy literary playfulness or peppery prose on a free Sunday afternoon. And because of his earned reputation (have you deposed a president?), his access (seventeen interviews!), and meticulous (usually recorded and on the record) approach, he cannot be dismissed, and we can be certain that just about everything in the book is true - so it is practically self-recommending. But how on earth do you hand such a book to an educated member of the electorate when they must flog themselves to even reach the chapters on the COVID pandemic?

Admittedly this may not matter as much as it ought to because in terms of general effect the arrival of Woodward’s books is so often an afterthought to the rapture and rampage of the previous week when excerpts are released by the Washington Post, his journalistic home since 1971, and his subsequent television appearances. Still, for the reader, the dryness is at least partly explicable (though not excusable) insofar as he is attempting something shy of wertfrei reporting by plainly sharing the findings of his access journalism. Further, there is an argument that this approach serves a function beyond guarding against criticisms of hyperbole or the taking of editorial liberties: when the noise of a writer is muted you are forced to confront the bare words and actions of a man like Donald Trump. Actions that are sometimes genuine transgressions, and words that are sometimes genuine threats, against liberty and democratic order, not mere flourishes designed to induce a reaction the cult can dismiss as ‘Trump derangement syndrome.’

But such possible benefits are the extent of a defense you can make here, and that Woodward lacks graceful and stylish prose is but one problem. There is, most notably, a jarring dissonance in what Woodward is trying to do, with what he is used to dealing with, and who his subject actually is. That is, Woodward is used to interviewing men who are stewards of an office. That is what they are. The men of his books alter the shape of that office, they bring their own management styles, and their own varied domestic and foreign policy ends. That is who they are. And what Woodward does is build a narrative about the interaction between the two based on extensive insider accounts. What we have in Trump is a man who is utterly one dimensional and who cares for himself above and to the exclusion of everything else, including that office.

Certainly, the description of what Woodward does sounds less like a job and more like a solemn service he bears as the link to our rulers, handing down to us his findings every 18 months. But it is a job. And in this job he has never been all that good at stringing together that narrative. His analysis is typically thin. His bias is a kind of Washington establishmentarianism. And his approach has always been more transactional than he would prefer to admit (Christopher Hitchens once referred to him as a “stenographer to the rich and powerful”). The benefit and the buzz of his books are advanced almost entirely from his unique position and the fact that generals, secretaries, and presidents spill their guts to him.

Indeed, the most interesting thing about the book, unfortunately for Woodard, is that the dissonance, the mismatch between Woodward and Trump, accentuates all these problems with his writing. For example, it is painfully obvious that Woodward wants to write Trump as a transitory man humbled by an eternal office, as he has done so many times before:

“I’ve talked to lots of your predecessors,” I said. . .They get philosophical when I ask the questions, what have you learned about yourself? And that’s the question on you: What have you learned about yourself?”

Trump sighed audibly. “I can handle more than other people can handle. Because, and I’ll tell you what, whether I learned about it myself – more people come up to me and say - and I mean very strong people, people that are successful even. A lot of people. They say, I swear to you, I don’t know how it’s possible for you to handle what you handle. How you’ve done this, with the kind of opposition, the kind of shenanigans, the kind of illegal witch hunts.”

“It’s a tough job,” I acknowledged.

“Tougher for me than probably just about anybody,” he said.

This flat, stupid interaction gives you a good sense of what reading Rage feels like. A dim question with an idiotic, rambling answer is packaged in useless detail and lacks a single piece of interesting analysis. What Woodward doesn’t seem to understand is that Trump isn’t capable of being who or what he wants him to be and he insists on trying to sit him up straight. So we have the paradoxical situation where Woodward’s understated conclusion that “Trump is the wrong man for the job” is based on an assessment of “his performance as president taken in its entirety” that gives Trump entirely too much credit. A dangerous, malicious, stupid president is brought up to the level of a mere incompetent.

So, is Rage worth your time? It depends. As another Trump book, probably not. It is reliable and will likely be useful for research. But for the general reader, the tradeoff between slugging through slapdash, lackadaisical writing and obtaining dependable information is probably too severe. Now, as an example of Woodward’s limitations? Most certainly.

David Murphy holds a Masters of Finance from the University of Minnesota.