Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate

Rating:
Summary: The Diminished Presidency
Review: Bob Woodward who wrote "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days" has taken another stab at chronicling the importance of the Watergate Scandal in "Shadow". This book looks at the importance of Watergate in the context of subsequent presidencies.

There is alot of detailed recitation of scandals in different Presidential administrations here. They range from the absolutely silly (the investigation of whether Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's Chief of Staff, snorted cocaine) to important ones (such as Iran-Contra under President Reagan and recently the Monica Lewinsky affair under Bill Clinton's Administration)

Watergate created a new climate for Presidents that is both good and bad. The good part is that Presidents have to take into account the fact that failure to behave ethically in office may result in resignation or impeachment. The bad part is that much of the modern presidency is now focused on "damage control" and avoiding scandals rather than simply governing. Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton all learned that media scrutiny is much greater and the Independent Counsel Law could be used to conduct witch hunts rather than investigate wrongdoing.

In essence, Woodward sees good in what has occurred, but also argues that the American Presidency is now a diminished office because of all the scrutiny from the press and legal profession that is a direct result of Watergate and the enactment of the Independent Counsel Law.

My greatest complaint about Woodward's book is that he could spend more time analyzing and less time simply regurgitating history. He tells us what happened, but fails to suggest alternatives or ways that we could have both ethics in government, yet avoid diminishing the powers of the Presidency. Admittedly, this might be difficult. However, Woodward doesn't even make the effort. His failure to really make an attempt to do so a serious disappointment to me as a reader.

The redeeming feature of the book is that it is good, solid reporting and accurate contemporaneous history. Those who are interested in a behind the scenes look at modern presidential scandals should read this book.

Mark

Rating:
Summary: A little bit too much Lewinsky for me..
Review: Bob Woodward's "Shadow - Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate" is an insightful book about how the Watergate scandal affected the presidencies of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Politics and scandals have gone hand in hand all through US history, but it was the Watergate scandal that became the example of scandal so great that it could actually cause the downfall of the US presidency.

In the first part of the book, Woodward discusses the effects after the Watergate scandal, and how it has influenced the oval office. The Watergate scandal obviously affected the two presidents closest in time, Ford and Carter, the most. President Ford, because he pardoned Nixon (and the uproar that followed doing so), and Carter, whose promise of change, his promise of total ethics ["I will never lie to you"], stood in great contrast to the scandals involving Bert Lance and Hamilton Jordan. Discussed is also the Reagan and Bush's Iran-Contra scandal, including all of the details and questions regarding what Reagan evidently knew (or didn't). The second half of the book is almost exclusively devoted to the apparently endless scandals and moral blunders of the Clinton Administration, with particular emphasis on the Lewinsky scandal. Quite frankly, the first and second half of the book are like two different books. I found the first part of the book to be incredibly interesting, and then the second part, to be... well, "just another Lewinsky book"... But I did find the details which shows us how the Clinton-Starr battle(s) turned personal to be very interesting (and frightening). Woodward shows us how the Independent council has almost become a monster of its' own, no longer controllable by any political branch or office! I give credit to Woodward for explaining this in a way so that the lay reader can understand how the Independent Council Act has affected the oval office.

My motive for reading this book was to gain a better understanding of the Watergate scandal. Of how the Watergate scandal has changed the political culture of Washington, changed the function of the presidency, and also what effect the Watergate scandal has had on the role of the press in the American society.

The two disclosures in this book that surprised me the most, were about Bush and his attitude regarding the 1991 Gulf War, and Reagan, and his loss of memory *while* he was still in office.

Overall the book is well written and a good read. But unfortunately, the book hardly touches on Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, in comparison to the number of pages devoted to Clinton. Because of the number of pages devoted to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal I ended up feeling that I got more gossip than political history, and therefore not full value for my money.

Rating:
Summary: The effect the Independent Counsel had on the Presidency
Review: I think this is a pretty good book on the Presidency of the United States since Watergate. Of course, Mr. Woodward played a significant role in reporting Watergate and has written extensively about the Presidency since then.

This book examines the various difficulties and scandals the Presidents since Nixon have had and the shadow the legacy of Watergate fell on those events and affected how they were handled and perceived. The most significant event in the way these things played out was the creation of the Independent Counsel. While I was never wild about the Independent Counsels before I read this book, I have come to the conclusion that it was an awful idea and an abuse of our Constitution. While the office was designed to not be accountable to the President to afford a credible ability to investigate the Executive Branch, it has no reasonable boundaries or limits and is not subject to any of the checks or balances that enable our government to function as reasonably as it does.

Freed from any limits of time, budget, or public accountability it is not surprising that many, but not all, of these Independent Counsels end up pursuing all kinds of things apart from what they were originally charged to pursue. My chief conclusion from reading this book is that this was a bad law with worse execution and should never be revived. Good riddance!

Half of the book is devoted to the Clinton scandals. The other large section is Iran-Contra. How you perceive Woodward's balance and objectivity will be colored by your personal politics. I have to admit that I found my own reading of the book varied at different points because of my own view of these scandals and whether or not I agreed with Woodward or felt that his own political biases were creeping in (which is impossible to avoid). But all-in-all there is a lot of good reporting here and is written in way that is easy to read. There are lots of endnotes to document the sources for the various statements, meetings, and conclusions drawn.

I recommend the book highly.

Rating:
Summary: A must for any student of history or politics
Review: Woodward's "Shadow," was, indubitably, the best book I have read in several years. It examined, with incredible detail and authority, the sundry effects of Watergate on the American presidency. Since Nixon's resignation, Woodward shows, the American public has viewed every leader as thoroughly corrupt and intent only on serving their own self interests. With painstakingly accurate and unbiased facts, Woodward convinced me that most of the post-Watergate presidents were victims rather than villians. President Reagan, for example, likely had little if any awareness of the Iran-Contra operation at the time it was executed; President Clinton has been plagued incessantly by unvalidated insinuations and malicious investigators hoping to serendipitously stumble upon some wrongdoing, e.g. Whitewater, where none existed. Overall, Woodward seems to suggest that the expiration of the independent counsel statute was overwhelmingly positive and that, in the future, the public should cease its endless cynicism and regain its erstwhile sentiments of respect for our leaders. Regardless of your views of my interpretation, I believe "Shadow" is one the most informative, and simultaneously engrossing, reads you are likely to find.