Dire Omens and Portents

 So, while most of the shocking revelations from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's Peril were mostly revealed prior to publication. the book itself paints a much more interesting portrait than the tidbits sizzling to sell the book in the first place.

Chronicling from late 2019 to early 2021, we start with Joe Biden deciding to run for the nomination, proceed through Donald Trump's reelection campaign and COVID, and end up around the end of Biden's first 100 days in office. All with authors' style of presenting a timely backed with facts and the soul of a prosecutor presenting a case. (Hey, I read All the President's Men; other than Woodward and Bernstein describing themselves as scrappy and handsome, which is not discussed here, the writing style hasn't changed much.) 

One can wonder if the figures treated most sympathetically here were ones who talked to him, or if some of the folks regarded as villains are actually not as bad as presumed. (In particular, Bob Barr is portrayed as less an architect of the obstruction of justice as more in trying to explain to his boss exactly what the Constitution says about the electoral college voting. Lindsay Graham also is portrayed as being one of the few trying to get Trump past the post election lies that the former guy has seemingly swallowed hook, line, and sinker. Generally agreed upon as being wretched hives of scum and villainy Ivanka, Jared, and Mitch McConnell even get more favorable press here than Trump.) 

I'm sure one of the biggest critiques people will point out in relation to this (and really ALL books with either author) is their politics; frankly, one gets the impression politics doesn't matter as much as effective administration to either of them. That seems to be the big conclusion on the end of the era, while they think Trump did good with getting the vaccine out and approved (it's mildly amusing, since that same fight to get treatment or some kind of prevention into the hands of people played a big part in the narrative of the last book I reviewed on here), the complete lack of any sort of plan to do anything with it AFTER getting it out doomed the response. Well, that and going out of the way to downplay the risks of the virus, prophylactic measures that could have helped, and indeed, playing up to his base, what could have actually been a much more effective thing almost died in the womb. 

This would be one of the big lessons in here. Projects that affect an entire planet need competent administration on several levels to work. 

The events of January 6th, 2021, get a lot of discussion. As is the perilous line that certain members of the Legislative branch have to walk to "keep the base happy" vs the actual mortal danger they were in. Since we end before the current crop of (pardon my language) batshit conspiracy that overtook some of that branch in trying to justify what so many of us watched live on TV, this wasn't explored as deeply as it really really needs to be by people who can at least present as being an objective observer. (Yeah, we all, myself included, can get caught up in a narrative that may or may not be the full story.)

Of note, they avoid, for the most part, discussing the nuttery that is "QAnon", although Guilianni comes off as a complete and total idiot in the eyes of almost everyone. 

When we get into Biden's first 100 days (almost a welcome relief at this point), we get deep into the structural faults that exist in the Senate that didn't particularly exist during Biden's tenure in both the Senate and his days as Veep. (This is a discussion that also deserves a deeper dive somewhere, as the Senate generally had a reputation for having less hot heads than the House, which has changed over time as ideologues have won races for state seats there. This is not to say that ideologues haven't served in the senate, I can name several from the past few years, but more that there does seem to be a heck of a lot more unwilling to do anything now than there were, and the narrative does point this out in a few places, pointing at the strained relations between Missouri's Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley. I look at my own state, where Rob Portman (who I disagree with on a lot of things) is retiring, and we're already getting TV ads from folks more in the vein of Hawley running for the seat. 

My conclusions after reading this could be stated as follows; While some things are black and white, much of the stuff leading to those events were much more gray than anyone was portraying. While the villains remain villains, some of them were less Bond Villain, and more MCU villain. Unless there is accountability, we run the risk of repeating everything again.