Bob Woodward was born in a small town in the Midwest, and he came late to journalism, after abandoning a career in the military in his mid-twenties. The Washington Post hired him, despite being a notoriously bad writer, to write for the metro section, because he was so exceptionally driven. When five Cubans were arrested for trying to break-in to the Watergate hotel, his editor assigned him to work with another showy young reporter he didnt like much, with a knack for missing deadlines, named Carl Bernstein. With the help of a few leakers, the number two guy at the FBI, a grand jury investigation, some hard-nosed editors, Katherine Graham, and Sy Hersh, they brought down a corrupt presidency. Woodward, ambitious but not interested in traditional fame (and a life-long Republican), never brags about this. Bernstein, casual, political, and always the life of the party, has never lived up to his reputation. But then again, how do you live your life after knowing youve reached your peak at 28 years old? Woodward forgot the lessons of Watergate, and while writing a slew of bestsellers, regularly comes under fire for becoming so close to his highly placed stories that he becomes more stenographer to power than investigative reporter. He also stood at the center of the biggest scandal in Post history, when his protégé had her Pulitzer revoked, when it turned out the subject of her featuresan eight year old drug addictsimply didnt exist. Bernstein simply dropped journalism altogether, spending more time in the gossip column than in the rest of the newspaper, and hes primarily famous, post-Watergate, for marrying and divorcing Nora Ephron, who wrote the book and movie Heartburn about him. But is that really a fair assessment? Without Watergate, Woodward would be about as famous as David Broder or Sy Hersh, which is no doubt the way he thinks of himself now. Bernstein, had he never been played in movies by Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson, would be just another newspaper reporter with a bottle of scotch in his drawer. A cliché perhaps, but not a nationally recognized failure. Its possible this conundrum is what drew Woodward to the subject of his first post-Watergate book. Wired was the biography of a man whod just seen his peak at an early age, John Belushi, who burnt out like a shooting star, and died in a hotel, never having to face decades of decline.
