The latest book critical of the Bush Administration is from Bob Woodward, the journalist whose work in the 1970s helped take down President Nixon. This morning, Woodward appeared on NBC’s Today show, where Matt Lauer asked about the timing of the book’s release. Editor and Publisher reports:

Lauer had challenged Woodward on the timing, since the charges in the book about the administration allegedly misleading the public on progress in the Iraq war are so significant. How could he hold that for a book? Why didn’t he get them published in his newspaper, The Washington Post, or shout them from a “mountaintop” instead of waiting to “make a splash” with them in a book?

Woodward replied that he had not waited “to make a splash, but to assemble the whole story,” and then go to the White House and Pentagon and CIA and ask, “What did you do?” He added: “Simon & Schuster and my bosses at the Washington Post said the only real obligation here is to tell it before the election.

“That’s what we’re doing. People can judge for themselves.”

I can understand why Simon & Schuster would want the book released in the weeks before the election; they’re publishers, and they want to profit from an atmosphere in which potential bookbuyers are already thinking about politics. Fair enough.

But why would the Washington Post want Woodward’s book published shortly before the election? Theoretically, the folks at the Post are journalists, which means that they should only care about reporting the story, not releasing it at a specific point in the election cycle. The fact that the Post felt Woodward had “an obligation” to publish before the election implies that the paper wanted to affect the election; if the reaction of the voters was of no concern to the Post, it really wouldn’t matter whether the book was released before or after the election.

President Bush isn’t on the ballot in this election, but conventional political calculus asserts that a book damaging to the president would also hurt the president’s party, especially in an election that’s historically dismal for the party occupying the White House. Did Bob Woodward accidentally admit that the folks at the Washington Post want the Republicans to fare poorly in the upcoming elections? Why else would they care when his book got published?