Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate by. Bob Woodward

In Shadow, the legendary journalist Bob Woodward uses his now characteristic unnamed sources, as well as many personal stories that give us a glimpse into what he refers to as a tarnished position of presidency and how it got that way over the past five terms.

Woodward first outlines the final days of the Watergate scandal, as well as the controversial decisions both President Nixon and Ford made during that time. Mainly focusing on the decision by Ford to pardon Nixon without any real investigation into his actual involvement.

Shadow then sets its focus on Ford and how his stint as President ended in a re-election loss to the fresh faced Jimmy Carter. Woodward takes time to highlight that Ford was doomed from the beginning of the election partly due to how he handled Nixon. Nevertheless, Jimmy Carter quickly vows to bring America back to a “no nonsense” nation. Yet shortly after undertaking the role of President, Carter’s administration is also tarnished with scandalous dealings that left society saying ‘not again’. America was in need of a new foundation at the time and Woodward does a good job creating this feeling of urgency throughout the text.

Scandal somehow also finds its way into the Reagan presidency as well. The glamorous Reagan was in fact trading large quantities of weapons to Iran, under the table if you will, highlighting the terms controversy.

“George Bush seemed unaware that the media could turn on him once Desert Storm was behind him and could not handle the results; and Bill Clinton entered scandal after scandal and made many of the same errors of dissimulation that Nixon did and barely survived, being only the second president in history to be impeached,” says Don Wismer, of the Cary Memorial Library, of Shadow’s take on George Bush Senior’s administration. Even before the actual book undertook the Clinton saga (that I assume everyone is familiar with) the reader can tell that Woodward is on the money with his ‘tarnished presidency’ theory.

This leads us to the common thread in all of the debacle, and that is the roll of the press. Nowadays investigative reporting is so popular that the inconsistencies that where once overlooked in these scandals, would no longer go unnoticed.

“Presidential privacy in particular has faded with the times, and Woodward describes its continued erosion. Students of modern politics should find this presentation engaging. The author's persona is so authoritative and his knowledge of the subjects so deep that the listener learns a great deal.”