The Daily Background

I mentioned this item in the asides box on the front page of the site yesterday, but perhaps it’s worth blogging about it at length here.

Bob Woodward’s fourth book on Bush, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008,” will be out September 8th. Recall that the Watergate figure’s first two books on the Administration shed a rather positive light it, whereas the most recent, State of Denial (fall 2006), was much more harsh and included several disclosures which reflected badly. When it came out, I blogged about several particularly interesting parts of the book while I made my way through it.

At the time, the White House dismissed it, saying “sort of like cotton candy — it kind of melts on contact.” If memory serves, Woodward had interviewed many in the Administration (including Bush and Cheney) for his first two books, whereas in his third he didn’t. This time around though, the Administration seems to be eager to cozy up to Woodward, granting him dozens of high level interviews:

Woodward has had remarkable cooperation from all levels of the Bush administration, with National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley encouraging top officials to participate.

Administration officials tell Politico that Woodward spent two mornings with President Bush and interviewed Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and a host of other senior officials.

Still, it’s unclear how Bush will come off in this one, regardless of his cooperation:

White House officials say they are optimistic that the book, which the publisher says “declassifies the secrets of America’s political and military involvement in Iraq,” will reflect more favorably on Bush than Woodward’s previous volume, “State of Denial,” which came out in September 2006.

The president’s surge strategy for Iraq, albeit late, has slowed the violence on the ground, and Bush aides believe the book will reflect that.

Woodward will be on 60 Minutes around the time The War Within is published, and as usual the Washington Post, Woodward’s paper, will publish some advance excerpts (and some stuff will probably leak ahead of time too once a reporter or two bribes a Borders clerk to break the Simon & Shuster embargo, as always happens).

A few details are worth noting that are probably making the White House a little bit nervous. First, the book is being promoted by the publishers by invoking Nixon: “There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers. This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes.”

Second, the book is set to be inked with a first printing of 900,000 copies. For a nonfiction comparison, Obama’s Audacity of Hope, which was a bestseller when it was released in 2006, had a first printing of 250,000 (Obama’s new policy book Yes We Can, which is mostly authored by his staff will have a first printing of 300,000). Woodward’s 2006 tome State of Denial went through three printings, the first of which was 750,000, the last of which ran 900,000 a month later.

Another detail that might make some at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue nervous (or it might just be me reading too much into), is that Amazon is already grouping the book with Ron Suskind’s new book The Way of The World:

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