Chasing History Review: The Pre-Watergate World of Carl Bernstein | Books

Few reporters are synonymous with their profession. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post is one, his former partner, Carl Bernstein, another. Together they broke the Watergate scandal, helped send a president’s henchmen to prison, and made Richard Nixon the only man to step down from office. On the big screen, Robert Redford played Woodward. Bernstein got Dustin Hoffman.

These days, Bernstein is a CNN analyst and an editor at Vanity Fair. Chasing the story, her sixth book, is a warm and inviting read.

Now 77 years old, he writes with the perspective and luxury of deadlines that he imposes on himself. His prose is dry and thoughtful even though it draws the reader in. Here is his look back and his farewell speech, with an apt caption: “A Kid in the Newsroom.”

He describes life before the Post Office, in pages steeped in politics – and haberdashery.

“I needed a suit.” So the book begins. Shortly after: “My mother and father, in the early 1950s, had taken me with them to join the Woodward & Lothrop sit-ins to desegregate his tea room.”

“Woodies”, a department store, closed in 1995. In the 1950s, rather than testify before the House Un-American Affairs Committee, Bernstein’s mother invoked his right against self-incrimination. His father suffered from his past membership in the Communist Party. J Edgar Hoover’s FBI was an unwanted presence in the Bernsteins’ lives.

Also in high school, Bernstein worked as a part-time copyist for the Washington Star. “Now that I had covered JFK’s inauguration, Mr. Adelman’s chemistry lesson interested me even less.” he admits.

He barely left high school, was kicked out of the University of Maryland, and lost his draft deferment from Vietnam. He found a place in a National Guard unit, removing the possibility of deployment and combat. Chasing History also includes a copy of Bernstein’s college transcript, which advertises a sea of ​​F’s and the capitalized notation: “ACADEMICALLY DISMISSED 1-27-65”.

On the other hand, before he was of voting age, Bernstein had covered or reported more than most journalists do in their lifetime. The 1960 presidential election, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy assassination, desegregation and Martin Luther King’s march on Washington. All were part of his mission.

The onboarding of DC’s barbershops, a race-fueled brawl at a high school football game, the death of a newsboy. In a nation in turmoil, everything caught Bernstein’s attention.

He is one of the last of his race, a national journalist without a diploma. Chasing History reminds us that by the mid-1960s, newsrooms were no longer dominated by working-class inflections. Carbon paper, graphite typesetting, ink-stained fingers and smocks would also give way to computing and digitization.

The Ivy League has become a prime training ground. Television would overtake print. Rough edges would be smoothed and polished, a premium placed on the facts. Hard knocks, not so much.

“A great generational shift was taking place in the profession of journalism,” Bernstein writes. “Publishers now wanted college graduates. My opinion was that you might be better prepared by graduating from a school of horticulture than from Yale or Princeton.

The kicker: “At least this way you could write the gardening column.”

Emphasis on the word “could”, however. Woodward went to Yale. Nowadays, they consider each other friends.

Chasing History is more about gratitude than grievance. For 10 pages, Bernstein recalls the names of his “young friends”, their “remarkable journeys”, his crossing with those who will emerge as “historical footnotes” and his “teachers and mentors”.

Lance Morrow, formerly of Time and The Wall Street Journal, arrives at the dedication page. They were roommates and worked at the Star. Later, their careers flourished. Morrow, according to Bernstein, “holds a unique place in the journalism of our time” and was an “incomparable joy” in the author’s life.

Likewise, Ben Stein – and his appearance as an economics professor in 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – earns more than a passing shout-out. The fact that Stein and his father served in the Nixon administration did not shake Bernstein’s affection. They grew up next to each other in suburban DC. In middle school, the boys founded a “lox-and-bagel/Sunday New York Times delivery service.” The two see each other every year.

Bernstein also pays tribute to David Broder, the late dean of the political press. On November 23, 1962, as a copyist, Bernstein took dictation from Broder, who was in Dallas that fateful Friday afternoon. Years later, Broder provided helpful advice that helped shape the path and coverage of “Woodstein’s” Watergate reporting.

A particularly notable mentor was George Porter, a Star bureau chief whom Bernstein respectfully refers to as Mr. Porter and who regularly took Bernstein to the office. During the 1964 Democratic primaries, Porter sent Bernstein to cover George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. Wallace never had a chance, but his candidacy was worthy of consideration. Think Donald Trump, prototype.

Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, was in the White House but Wallace got nearly 30% in Indiana. When Wallace turned to Maryland, Bernstein was there on the field.

It was the first time he “saw a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens whom I thought were familiar.”

Wallace lost but got 40% and a majority of blank votes. In the defeat, he blamed black voters, except he chose an “N” word, and an “incompetent press”, for not acknowledging his appeal. The church, the unions, Ted Kennedy, and “all the other northern Democratic senators” were also subjects of Wallace’s contempt.

Chasing History is part autobiography, part history lesson. Amid continued turbulence, Bernstein’s memoirs are more than mere reminiscence.