‘American democracy will continue to be tested’: Peril author Robert
It is nearly half a century since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein became the world’s most famous journalistic double act, immortalized by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men.
But Woodward’s latest book, about the decline and fall of Donald Trump, is co-written with a different Washington Post colleague who was not yet born at the time of the Watergate break-in.
So, Robert Costa, aged 35, how does it feel to be the new Carl Bernstein?
“There is only one Carl Bernstein, to be sure, and I have immense respect for him,” Costa says by phone. “But we both had the privilege of working alongside Bob Woodward and when you work with Bob Woodward, you learn his method of reporting. He spends hours and hours interviewing people, probing them for better answers, candid answers about what really happened.”
Costa, who has spent much of his career as a daily political reporter at the Post, relished a chance to immerse himself in long-form investigative journalism. “Woodward would tell me, go back and keep digging, and I would have people over at my house and we would sit for hours with different sources.
“He would do the same and really talk to people in person. Get away from the phone, get away from email and do interviews in person. Bob Woodward is as old school as you can get and I think that’s a compliment in a digital journalism age where the frantic pace at times takes you away from the ability to really report at length.”
It is a characterization that resonates with the All the President’s Men depiction of Woodward and Bernstein diligently rifling through checkout cards at the Library of Congress or knocking on doors late at night and coaxing clues out of unwilling witnesses.
Woodward and Costa – time will tell if it has the same ring – interviewed Trump for the Washington Post in March 2016. The presidential candidate’s observation that real power derives from “fear” gave Woodward the title of his first book in what would prove a Trump trilogy: Fear (2018), Rage (2020) and, with Costa, Peril (2021).
The word haunts it from the opening page, which quotes Joe Biden’s inaugural address – “We have much to do in this winter of peril” – to the last sentence of the 418th and final page: “Peril remains.”
The authors interviewed more than 200 people (though both Biden and Trump declined) on “deep background”, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts covering the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, presidential election, 6 January insurrection and nascent Biden presidency.
Among the more colorful anecdotes are Senator Lindsey Graham telling Trump: “You fucked your presidency up,” only for Trump to abruptly…
Read More: ‘American democracy will continue to be tested’: Peril author Robert