Like a rat off a sinking ship...

That's they way I see the formerly great investigative reporter Bob Woodward who has since traded that honourable title for that of the connected insider hack. Apparently Bob has since seen that the only light at the end of the BushCo tunnel is the light of a train barreling down on us all and he's jumping out of the way. Having lost my respect for "AllThe President's Men" Woodward years ago, this latest turn-around just confirms my contempt. The enemy of my enemy is a bobby-come-lately hack.

As (the proudly eponymous) Matt Yglesias asks:

What's The Deal With Bob Woodward? His new book:

In Bob Woodward’s highly anticipated new book, “State of Denial,” President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war. It’s a portrait that stands in stark contrast to the laudatory one Mr. Woodward drew in “Bush at War,” his 2002 book, which depicted the president — in terms that the White House press office itself has purveyed — as a judicious, resolute leader, blessed with the “vision thing” his father was accused of lacking and firmly in control of the ship of state.

Why were the earlier books so different? Did he somehow not notice this stuff before? It's a serious problem for the most prominent people in the journalism world to be merely lagging indicators, praising leaders when they're popular and then pointing out that, in fact, they suck only after a whole series of disasters discredit them.