What a strange book for me to be reading!  It’s a nonfiction memoir-biography I only heard of very recently and which was published 8 years ago about events which transpired over 50 years ago – the Watergate Scandal and its fallout. 

The Last of the President’s Men 
by Bob Woodward
2015 
Read by Campbell Scott 6h 9m
Rating – 8.75 

The Last of the President’s Men by Bob Woodward was more than mentioned in Cassidy Hutchinson’s Enough which I very much enjoyed just last month. Hutchinson said that during her difficulties and recovery she read a book about Alexander Butterfield’s role in the Watergate Scandal. The Last of the President’s Men inspired and gave her courage. I remember Watergate and the hearings and Butterfield and what he did. 

Then a friend who knew I’d enjoyed Hutchinson’s book recommended the Woodward book and when I looked on Audible I saw  it had been reviewed several times recently, as a result of “Enough,” I’d suppose.  Hutchinson even visited Butterfield in California before she finished writing her own book and she told about that experience toward the very end.  Okay – good enough for me!    

One very interesting and circumstantial? (weird?) thing,  Butterfield held the same job under H.R. Halderman for Richard Nixon that Hutchinson had under Mark Meadows for Donald Trump. They were Deputy Chiefs of Staff or, in Hutchinson’s case the same job was called Assistant Chief of Staff. But these two minded a lot of things for their bosses and they each knew a lot of things about what went on under their president and then they were subpoenaed to the Congressional Investigations and the Hearings. The hearings for both of them were in front of Congress and televised live (one in 1974 and the other in 2023) to reveal what they knew.  

The Last of the President’s Men is a kind of memoir/biography in which Butterfield told his story in interviews and notes to Woodward who did the actual writing and got it published in 2015.  (Hutchinson’s book is a memoir published a couple months ago.).But I was stunned at how very much alike the stories of Hutchinson and Butterfield are. No wonder Hutchinson was inspired and encouraged, given strength.  Butterfield definitely outed Nixon re his “tapes” and what all they covered up, while Hutchinson did almost the same thing (not quite) with Trump and Jan 6, but not quite. Both were reviled by many in their political party after their Congressional testimony.  

Furthermore, I was surprised at how similar Tricky-Dick Nixon and Trumpty-Dumpty really are/were. That probably shouldn’t be so surprising as evidenced by the fact they both broke laws in order to stay in power and both were impeached for their troubles.  Also, they both are (or were) insecure, paranoid, controlling and extremely angry men while thinking they’re the greatest president ever; they’re just not given anywhere near enough credit.   

Of course there are huge differences, too,  Trump is an extrovert and kind of dim – in the bottom 5 of the presidents intellectually (from what I’ve read) while Nixon was an introvert with a somewhat higher intelligence for a president. BUT! both were stuupid, by which I mean lacking some modicum of general common sense – lol.  

Both books are excellent –   

https://networks.h-net.org/node/19474/reviews/132013/rushay-woodward-last-presidents-men