>Bob Woodward
Muckraker Bob Woodward, the intrepid reporter portrayed by Robert Redford in All the President's Men, is a connoisseur of Capital crimes and indiscretions. But Bill Clinton's recent troubles took even the celebrated chronicler of Watergate by surprise. "I never expected another impeachment investigation of a President in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment," he writes.
In his new book, Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate, Woodward, 56, explores Richard Nixon's impact on his five successors, concluding that each failed to grasp fully the new standards of accountability under which hedging and deception—in matters from Iran-Contra to marital infidelity—are no longer acceptable. None of these men, he says, "had figured a way to talk early and directly about troubles or inquiries." In one telling chapter, Woodward, who lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, reporter Elsa Walsh, 41, and daughter Diana, 3, describes a distraught Hillary Clinton on Martha's Vineyard days after her husband finally acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Says Woodward: "I wanted very much to get to the inner life and the emotional toll that these investigations take."
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