Bob Woodward seems so mealymouthed, but he might be a genius at saying everything, anything, and nothing.

Today, on Fox News Sunday, George Will took a staunch position about Obama's IYLYPYCKYP fix:

And I do think this is a constitutional scandal. Suppose the next Republican president and there will be another Republican president, comes into the press room someday and says, "You know, I really think the capital gains tax does not serve the national interest, so we're just, as an act of executive discretion, going to quit enforcing that for a few years."

That's not the rule of law.

Bob Woodward broke in and said something — in the slow, strangely over-restrained manner he has — that made me laugh out loud:

It is in a way, but as you know, there is a strong other side on that. And we're at the moment here where people have to make decisions and this is an implementation issue. And the pre -- I think people are going to give him discretion.

On re-listen, I laughed again. And then the third time, I said: "Actually, he's right"... if you understand what he's saying.

Now, trying to write this post, I'm not sure whether "It is in a way" meant "In a way, it is the rule of law" or "In a way, it is not the rule of law." When I laughed, I assumed the latter, the "is" being an affirmation of what Will had said, so Will's "not" was implied in Woodward's "is." I laughed because Will had been so firm, and Woodward seemed to agree, but with the weaseling "in a way." Then he added an acknowledgement of the "other side," which he called "strong."

And I'm not sure whether the "strong other side" was meant to oppose the statement that what Obama did is consistent with the rule of law or to oppose the statement that it is not the rule of law. You'd think reading the remainder of what Woodward said would clear that up, but as I read those next 2 sentences, I'm not sure whether they are meant to articulate the "strong other side" or whether he's moved on to another point.

Woodward might be brushing off the legal question and saying, whatever you and I might be able to say about the law, it doesn't much matter because the "people are going to give him discretion." That is: Obama is going to get away with it.

Or he might have meant to explain the legal issue: The question is whether the President is executing the law, and there's plenty of room for discretion in a President's decisionmaking about the scope of what is involved in implementing a particular statute, and most people, faced with Obama's implicit assertion that he's only executing the law, not writing new law, will see him as acting within the range of his discretion.

Or he might have been channeling the sort of legal attitude that says the rule of law is what you can get away with.  Another way to say that is:

Bob Woodward: "I think you have to kind of step back and say what’s the theory of governing here."

"And the theory is, it seems, oh, there are investigations of the IRS so we can’t interfere."

There is this leak investigation of the AP, so we can’t get involved. Oh, there is an investigation of Benghazi, so we’re not responsible. The President and the executive branch need to govern on a daily basis and you can’t purchase immunity from governing....

But some institutions have a no-surprise rule, which is you need to make sure the person at the top, who is the president in this case, he is constitutionally responsible for the whole executive branch, to be told about things that are going on that are bad. And you can’t kind of say, oh, that happened last year and they’re investigating. You need to stop the bad things right away.

When things fall into the wrong hands.

From Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's "The Brethren," the 1979 book about the the Supreme Court (in the 1969 Term through the 1975 Term). This vignette takes place after the oral argument in the Watergate tapes case (United States v. Nixon) at page 374:

The clerks turned to humor to kill time as they waited to learn what was going on. One of Powell’s clerks, disturbed by his boss’s memo the day before, drafted a phony opinion and gave it very limited circulation to the clerks’ dining room. “We believe the principle of executive privilege is important…. This case is different from all others that will come before the Court. The Court should be guided by a solicitous concern for the effective discharge of the President’s duties and the dignity of his high office.

“However, we’re deciding this case differently, because Nixon is a crook and somebody ought to throw the son of a bitch in jail.”

Marshall laughed heartily when his clerks showed him a copy. The copies were destroyed for fear that one might fall into the wrong hands.

"Sperling Admits Obama Misled in Debate: The President Did Propose the Sequester."

"We put forth the design of' the sequestration, Sperling finally admits after a long back-and-forth."



Here's the whole "Meet the Press" transcript. Here's the part about Bob Woodward:

DAVID GREGORY: Here was an e-mail from you to Bob Woodward that was released. In it: "I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that the president asking for revenues is moving the goalpost. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim." When you said "you will regret staking out that claim," what did you mean?

GENE SPERLING: I meant that, while the first issue of whose idea it was, the sequester, was one I disagreed with him on but I could see how honorable people could disagree. I was trying to explain to him, from a substantive point of view, that the idea that the president of the United States was moving the goalpost by asking for the type of balance of tax reform that raised revenues, that the Speaker Boehner himself, as you noted, had called for, as well as long-term entitlements, together, to get rid of the sequester, was not only not moving the goalpost: That was the whole idea of the sequester. And I think that e-mail was cordial. It was substantive. It was polite.

DAVID GREGORY: But you say, "You're going to regret it." I mean, does the president think that's a good idea to say to reporters, to challenge them that, "You're going to regret staking out that claim"?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I've had 20-year relationship with Bob Woodward. It's been friendly, it's been cordial. Those e-mails are very substantive. They're cordial, they're friendly. And his reply to me--

DAVID GREGORY: Why do you think he's gone public with it and made an issue of it?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I guess I'd ask people to look at his reply. His reply said, "Gene, you don't need to apologize." He said he welcomed my advice. So I can't really explain it. All I can say, David, is I hope Bob and I can put this behind us because I think it takes away the focus--

DAVID GREGORY: Were you threatening him in any way?

Later in the show, Gregory asked Tom Brokaw to opine on the Woodward/Sperling "threat" question, and he said:

I've known Bob a long time, going back to his seminal days as a Watergate reporter. And I'm confident that White Houses have made him a lot more uncomfortable than that e-mail over the course of the years when he's talked to them. Any reporter who's worked in this town has been yelled at by somebody in the White House or somebody on the Hill. It just comes with the territory.

This is a speck that became a sandstorm overnight, unfortunately, and I think it's really reflective of the kind of media environment in which we live now, in which everybody's looking to stir something up. When I was covering Watergate, there was a wise old bird who did commentary for The New Republic, and his named John Osborne. He was one of the great, great commentators in this town.

He took me to lunch one day, and he'd had a blowup with the White House the day before. And he looked at me and he said, "You know, Brokaw, the problem is that journalists, all of us, we've got glass jaws. We throw punches; when somebody swings back, we go down with the first punch, screaming foul of some kind." I think that's what we have to keep in mind.

Reading Bob between the lines here in his last appearances, I think he does believe it kind of got out of his control at some point. We've got to move on. The country doesn't care about this. This is about an intramural fight in a high school cafeteria; it should be over now.

Hear that? It should be over now.

"Why the 'threat' on Bob Woodward matters."

Kathleen Parker writes:

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.

Parker's trying to get past the pesky issue of whether Woodward was really threatened.

By the way... tempest in a teapot... leak in the dike.... More of the dreadful reliance on clichés from Washington writers that has been driving me crazy lately.

Here's a rule to try to follow: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

"Watching Woodward last 2 days is like imagining my idol Mike Schmidt facing live pitching again."

"Perfection gained once is rarely repeated."

Plouffe takes his shot.

Me too, says Lanny Davis...

... when everybody's talking about Bob Woodward.

The Very Senior White House Person who threatened Bob Woodward was Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the President.

Politico reveals the name and presents the text of the email:

I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. 

So there's also that conversation, which involved yelling, and we don't have the transcript of it.

I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. 

These Washington folk are fond of clichés — moving the goal posts, forest for the trees, seeing eye to eye. I would lose my mind!

I know you may not believe this...

As a reader, I translate that into I don't even believe what I'm about to say myself.

... but as a friend...

More filler and one more thing that's not believable, but maybe there's a Washington kind of "friendship" that we outsiders don't quite get.

... I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain [sic] with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start....

If "I think you will regret" is supposed to be the threatening part, the accusation is weak. Sperling is bullshitting — blathering the administration's position wordily — but only explicitly saying Woodwood is wrong and predicting that Woodward will ultimately agree that the President didn't "move the goalposts." But I didn't hear the tone and content of the earlier discussion. And Sperling's apology and subsequent verbosity — I'm eliding a chunk of it — suggest that he knows he crossed a line.

The email ends:

Not out to argue and argue on this latter point.

Which of course he just did.

Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.

My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.

That sounds pretty meek, but — again — implies that he was awful earlier.

Here's Woodward's response:

Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening. I know you lived all this. My partial advantage is that I talked extensively with all involved...

So, Woodward is conciliatory and seemingly all about maintaining his continued access to Sperling. What happened next that motivated Woodward to go on TV and say he was threatened and that it was "madness"?

Woodward is a master at this game, so let's figure out what he's doing. He said he welcomes a little heat. Then he makes some big heat of his own. Why?

Woodward's gone rogue!

"A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing."

"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’ "

"Or George W. Bush saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need’ or even Bill Clinton saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters,’ as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document? Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country. That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time."