Bob Woodward of Watergate fame was in Maine on Sunday to receive an award.
In his remarks after receiving the award he told a few stories, one of which recounted a dinner he attended in 2005 when he was seated next to Al Gore.
Gore, it seemed, thought Woodward should approach the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq the way he approached the Nixon Administration and Watergate.
“Dinner [seated] next to Al Gore is, to be honest, taxing,” Woodward said. “In fact, it’s really unpleasant.”
It was 2005, and Gore berated Woodward, saying, “Why don’t you come out against Bush and the Iraq War?” Woodward replied that his work was to get at facts, not take a position.
Gore insisted that Woodward took a strong position against Nixon, and Woodward again insisted that the Watergate stories “were as empirical as we could make them.” Gore used a synonym for manure, saying “I read those stories.”
“And I wrote those stories,” Woodward replied, but that “did not move the needle of self-doubt” in the former vice-president’s mind.
Just another reminder of how different the history of the last decade would have been if not for the voting debacle in Florida in 2000 and the Supreme Court's shameful intervention.