Bob Woodward, reporter for the Washington Post and famed for his reporting of Watergate, has been steadily falling in my estimation to the extent I've paid him any attention at all. Any reporter who can get George Bush practically to sit in his lap for an interview can't be all good; and in the case of Bob Woodward there is now reason to ask whether he's any good at all.

Atrios has called attention to Woodward's efforts to poo-poo the CIA leak in July in an interview on "Hardball," for instance—

MATTHEWS: In the leak case involving Joe Wilson and that trip to Niger.

WOODWARD: And that case, when I think it is all told, there is going to be nothing to it. And it is a shame. And the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful.
....

MATTHEWS: Well, was this, then, a crime? We`re talking about a crime.

WOODWARD: I don't think there's any crime.

With his latest declaration that he has testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury that he knew that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent at least a month before anyone else, Woodward seems to be doing all he can to save the Bush administration. But I have to wonder if it's his own fame that he's attempting to preserve. After all, those who can bring down the Bush administration stand to gain even greater fame than those who brought down Richard Nixon and his band of thugs, loathsome as they were.

So while Woodwood was denigrating the importance of Plamegate, it appears that he is in some sense smack in the middle of it. And since he refuses to identify his source, we all get to play Deep Throat II, which should keep his name in the headlines for awhile. This is remarkable behavior for a journalist—or so one would like to think.

But whatever Woodward may think of the importance of Plamegate, the public isn't buying. A CBS News poll released November 2 asked how important the respondents thought the CIA leak was. The response allowed a comparison with the public's perception of other scandals and investigations. I've reordered the poll findings to get a better picture. (Note that these numbers are from polls taken at the time of each "scandal.")

Here's the breakdown of those who rated the matters of "great importance" to the life of the nation—

Very important
•Watergate	53%	May 73
•CIA leak	51%	Nov. 05
•Iran-Contra	48%	Feb. 87
•Clinton-Lewinsky	41%	Jan. 98
•Whitewater	20%	Mar. 94

Here are those numbers combined with those who rated the matters of "some importance"—

Important
•CIA leak	86%	Nov. 05
•Iran-Contra	81%	Feb. 87
•Watergate	78%	May 73
•Clinton-Lewinsky	62%	Jan. 98
•Whitewater	49%	Mar. 94

This is the rank order that I would've assigned, though of course Clinton-Lewinsky and Whitewater had no importance at all if viewed in the context of "the life of the nation."