In 1970, a young U.S. Navy Lieutenant was waiting with a parcel outside the entrance to the Situation Room in the basement of the Richard Nixon’s White House. It was an anxious time for the country and for him. 1/x

Vietnam still rolling the nation’s foreign policy and politics. And the young aide spent quiet moments wondering what he would do when his Navy service ended in a few months. However, the lieutenant was not alone or quiet for very long. 2/x

Indeed, soon struck up a conversation with a reserved, dignified, gray-haired man who came along and joined the wait. “Lieutenant Bob Woodward, sir,” the 27-year-old officer said. “Mark Felt,” the assistant director of the FBI in charge of the inspection division replied. 3/x

Though the G-man was not much interested in conversation, Woodward got him talking, first about areas of common interest (including graduate school at GW), then about career advice for what anxious, ambitious young aide should do next. 4/x

Years later, Woodward, out of the service and reporting for the Washington Post, kept Felt talking as a source. The rest is history. Within 4 years of that first meeting, Woodward was famous for his reporting on the White House he once delivered packages to. 5/x

With the help of Woodward's Washington Post partner Carl Bernstein and his high-level, secret source known as “Deepthroat,” Woodward's reports brought down Nixon over the wealth of crimes that made up the Watergate scandal. 6/x

More than 30 years later, Felt, the quiet man Woodward met that day outside the Situation Room, finally revealed he was deep throat, and the reporter and best-selling author wrote that up too. 7/x

In the years after Watergate, Woodward has rarely taken his eye off the Situation Room door, aside from occasional forays to the campaign trail in the 1990s and the Chateau Marmont to investigate death John Belushi. 8/x

But ever since that chance encounter with Felt, Woodward’s been waiting, wondering and working to figure out just what America’s president in the Sit Room been thinking and deciding on war and national security. 9/x

This has been particularly true in the years after 9/11, in which Woodward has written now 7 books about the battles that day produced, including his new book Rage on President Donald Trump, which will be released next week. 10/x

Like much else in the Trump era, Woodward’s book didn’t turn out as expected. Woodward planned to do what he’s done since the end of the Cold War—write a book about national security. 11/x

But with COVID and increasing unrest at home, and then unprecedented access to Trump, the book became something else. As is his wont, Woodward followed the story and ended up with revealing insights into Trump’s thinking. 12/x

Perhaps more than anytime since Watergate, Woodward’s judgment of a president is made manifestly clear: He writes, “I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.” 13/x

But Woodward owns some of the blame for where we are. Few should know better than Woodward that sometimes a president comes along who doesn’t belong in the Oval Office or Situation Room. 14/x

For a reporter who helped bring down a president, and whose reporting helped lead to reforms to shrink the power of the presidency 45 years ago, Woodward’s books—especially since 9/11—have been presidential porn. 15/x

If in Watergate, Woodward demonstrated our presidents are imperfect humans, in his works since, he’s rebuilt the prestige and power of the office by painting iconic pictures of Clinton, Bush, Obama as men of action, purpose and good intentions, even when they screwed up. 16/x

They were not always right, but Woodward never painted them as dishonorable. The end result when you read all these books—which I’ve used in my own writing—is men (mostly in Woodward's telling) sent to Washington deserve the benefit of the doubt and presumption of eminence. 17/x

Such blind trust always seemed odd coming from someone who exposed what a person like Nixon could do in that job. Yet, Woodward's book are so easy to read - they made the job seem easier than it was, the people more deserved of the power, the risk of disaster smaller. 18/x

Unsurprisingly, as Woodward wrote book after book, Washington hand more and more power back to the White House, regardless of who was, or might become president. As war became the health of the modern presidency, Woodward’s books about war became the same. 19/x

Unfortunately, Donald Trump walked into that very healthy, hyper-powered presidency. He was unfit from day one but the power he held gave him the potential to be far worse than Nixon. Yet many, like Woodward, hoped he’d change. 20/x

Trump didn’t, and disaster unfolded. Woodward doesn’t deserve blame for keeping some details until he finished reporting. He deserves some blame for the power Trump holds right now and all he’s done or not done with it. 21/x

I’ll be buying and reading Rage, as I have every other Woodward book; but there’s a part of me that will wonder what would have happened if Woodward hadn’t written them in the first place. 22/22