Politics & Power Quote by Bob Woodward

Woodward is doing something quietly provocative here: he’s reclaiming Watergate from the easy cynicism that treats it as proof the whole American project is a con. Coming from the reporter who helped detonate Nixon’s presidency, the line reads less like triumphalism than institutional realism. He’s not celebrating virtue; he’s stressing process.

The intent is to reframe scandal as stress test. Watergate wasn’t just a morality play starring a corrupt president and heroic journalists. It was a systems failure that triggered systems correction. Woodward foregrounds the “Judiciary and the Congress” as the real protagonists, nudging the audience away from the seductive myth that accountability arrives via lone truth-tellers. Journalists can expose, but only institutions can compel: subpoenas, rulings, impeachment pressure, the slow grind of lawful consequence.

The subtext is a warning against fatalism. If Watergate’s lesson becomes “everyone’s crooked,” then the public stops demanding enforcement and starts demanding entertainment. Woodward argues for the opposite takeaway: the machinery can still bite, but only if it’s allowed to. That’s why the phrase “independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch” is doing heavy lifting. It’s an acknowledgment of a constitutional paradox: oversight has to reach into the very branch being investigated, and independence is never absolute - it’s designed, contested, protected.

Context matters. Woodward’s career spans the post-Watergate era through Iran-Contra, Clinton, Iraq, and Trump - decades of institutional erosion and partisan reflex. This is a veteran insisting that the anti-heroic answer is the most hopeful one: accountability is bureaucratic, unglamorous, and possible.