Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, The Examiner
2006-10-10 09:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin cover people, power and politics in the beltway each weekday. Email them at yan@dcexaminer.com .

Isikoff: Woodward’s ‘State of Denial’ is ‘unreadable’

Has healthy competition given way to animus among D.C.’s top investigative reporters?

Carol Joynt, owner of Nathan’s of Georgetown, hosted Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and The Nation’s David Corn at George Mason University last week for a special edition of her popular “Q&A Café” series.

Isikoff and Corn co-authored the recent book “Hubris,” which just so happens to plow much of the same ground as Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” published a month later. The two spoke candidly about how their book stacks up against Woodward’s. A video of the discussion was posted on Nathan’s Web site Monday.

When asked by Joynt if he feels “eclipsed” by Woodward, Corn replies, “It’s frustrating on several counts. There are scoops in his book ... that actually are in our book, which came out a month earlier.”

Isikoff was even more direct. “Woodward is a great reporter [but] this is also unreadable,” he said.

“What did you say?” he continued, turning to Corn. “It’s like wading through sludge?”

“That was a private conversation!” Corn protested.

But Joynt, clearly pleased with Isikoff’s honesty in her on-the-record forums, encouraged Isikoff to have another glass of wine.

Perhaps the vino explains why the next day, at the authors’ book party at The Reef in Adams Morgan, Isikoff approached Joynt with an unusual request.

“[O]ver by one of the aquariums, Isikoff begged me to excise from last night’s interview the part where he totally trashed Bob Woodward,” Joynt wrote on her blog.

Her response: “I love Michael, but I can no more do that than he could do the same with one of his interviews. Leave out the sweetest parts? Michael! It will be online by Monday.”

And so it was, for all to see.

“What I said is what I said,” Corn acknowledged when reached Monday.

He also pointed that he’s criticized Woodward’s book before, including in the current issue of The Nation.

“He’s a good reporter, but he’s also late to the party,” Corn said.

For Isikoff’s part, he called his words an “expression of pure envy.”

“I don’t imagine that this is going to hurt Bob’s sales,” he said good-naturedly before adding, “For the record, Bob Woodward is a great man.”

Woodward did not respond to a request for comment.

Will anyone pledge against Nancy Pelosi?

“I Pledge Allegiance to ...”

... vote against Nancy Pelosi? The conservative group Free Enterprise Fund sent 21 moderate Democratic congressional candidates a pledge on Thursday, asking them to commit to not support the minority leader for speaker should the Democrats retake the House in November. In the release, Mallory Factor, chairman of the organization, says that “A vote for Pelosi is a vote for bigger government and higher taxes.”

On the one hand, of course, this must be a annoying slight to the California Democrat, but it’s also a clear acknowledgment that even Republicans are already planning for a Democratic House of Representatives in 2007.

But will it work? So far, the Free Enterprise Fund hasn’t heard back from anyone, and odds are that few candidates will be willing to bite the hand that may eventually feed them.

Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider doesn’t think the Free Enterprise Fund will have many takers. “A church-going grandmother who has made fiscal responsibility a high ethical standard and middle class tax cuts a priority must be a frightening prospect for Republican groups that support President Bush and his Rubber Stamp Congress’ failed economic policies and ballooning budget deficits,” she said.

Cabinet wives love Ricky

Cabinet wives have found themselves a charity. And its celebrity spokesman is none other than Latin pop star Ricky Martin.

The organization is called Innocents at Risk, and seeks to combat trafficking in persons, especially among children.

Among those working with the charity: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ wife, Rebecca; HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson’s wife, Marcia; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez’s wife, Edi; and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s under secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula J. Dobriansky (Rice doesn’t have a spouse, so Dobriansky apparently gets the job).

Founded by socialite Deborah Sigmund, the charity has its first gala on April 19.

Martin has already met with the board when he was in town last month to testify before Congress on the slavery issue.

Our new libations at the Ritz-Carlton

And now, for some shameless self-promotion. Degrees bar at the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown is now shaking two new drinks, the “Yea” and the “Nay.” The Yea is a pomegranate-vodka concoction, while the Nay gets its zip from Red Bull, peach and, well, vodka. Both are excellent (we picked them ourselves).

Speakeasy

“A beautiful Sunday morning to pray and play. And that’s just what POTUS opted to do, enjoying his usual Sabbath regimen of working on spiritual and physical fitness. ... The morning was so beautiful that it brought to mind Ernie Banks’ immortal words: ‘Let’s pray two.’ ”

– From Sunday’s White House pool report covering the president, by Cox Newspapers’ Ken Herman

“Each time you print, it hurts my family. ... I am human, not an animal to keep whipping.”

– Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., incarcerated for corruption, in a letter he sent to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which broke the story of his scandal

By the numbers

$88.94: The amount Larry Kissell, a Democrat running for North Carolina’s 8th District seat and a multimillionaire textile-plant owner, ended the third quarter with in his campaign coffers.

$1.76M: Cost of a six-person space trip charter, complete with four nights at Richard Branson’s private island in the Caribbean, as listed in the 2006 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book.