The biggest story for America today is the automatic spending cuts triggered by the sequester. The biggest story for the DC Beltway? Whether Bob Woodward was “threatened” by the White House.
The Washington Post veteran became the news after writing that President Obama’s insistence that the Republicans agree to raise taxes to avoid a sequester amounted to “moving the goalposts.” On Wednesday, he followed up by calling the president’s statement that an aircraft carrier would not be deployed because of the sequester “a kind of madness.”
There are two things of note here.
First, the White House didn’t ignore him. A senior aide responded with what Woodward described as a heated phone call, and followed up with a long e-mail.
Woodward’s standing had something to do with that. But we suspect that the main reason the White House responded is that a prominent reporter finally tried to hold the president responsible for his own words and actions.
Which leads to our second point. The story isn’t whether Bob Woodward was right when he said he interpreted the words of the White House e-mail as a threat. It’s whether he was right when he reported that the president isn’t telling the truth about his role in the sequester, and is behaving badly, as his actions on national security show.
America is still waiting for the White House press corps to take up that story.