Bob Woodward: “The Old Order is Dying”
In a Sarasota speech, Washington Post icon Bob Woodward, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, laments the state of media culture.
SARASOTA — In assessing the impact of President Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate last week, Washington Post icon Bob Woodward reached deep into history Monday afternoon, to a funeral spectacle described by Barbara Tuchman in “The Guns of August.”
The 1910 wake presaged the catastrophe of the First World War and marked the last hurrah of dynastic rule across Europe. ”‘On history’s clock,’” quoted the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for investigative journalism, “it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor.”
“Now, more than a century later, the sun is setting again on the old order. The old order is dying,” he told a sold-out crowd attending the Library Foundation for Sarasota County fundraiser. “What happened in 2016 is, history’s clock searched for a replacement to the old order.”
Where the radical new American experiment goes from here is anyone’s guess. But the dean of the Washington watchdogs has somehow managed to preserve access to the nation’s highest office. After his 2018 book “Fear: Trump in the White House” provoked insults from the mercurial chief executive — “a piece of fiction,” “con on the public,” “liar” — Woodward has since interviewed Trump a number of times, and has a followup scheduled for publication before the November elections.