It was certainly nice catching up with Jim Mann [See Biography ], a Washington-based author who spent 33 years reporting for a number of daily newspapers, the last 23 of those years with The Los Angeles Times before accepting a buyout in 2001.
Since leaving the newspaper industry, Mann has written a number of books, including a national best-seller and is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Soon after graduating from Harvard University, the Albany native began reporting for the New Haven Journal in 1968 before landing at The Washington Post, where he worked in the Metro Department from 1969 through 1972, covering everything from the federal courthouse to Watergate.
Mann was not only assigned to do some early reporting in the Watergate scandal, including covering the burglars’ trial during the long blistering summer of 1972, but was instrumental in getting future Pulitzer-Prize winner Bob Woodward hired at the Post.
Asked about his recollections of Mann, Bob Woodward, responding through an email, wrote: `` Jim [Mann] is one of the most aggressive, thoughtful reporters of his generation.’’ `` Yes’’, Mr. Woodward recalled, ``he was more than instrumental in pushing the Post Metropolitan Editor Harry Rosenfeld to hire me in 1971. I was then working for the Montgomery County Sentinel, a weekly in the suburban Maryland County which Jim was covering for the Post.’’ And as a ringing endorsement to the superior quality of Mann’s brand of journalism, Woodward went on to write: `` If the average newspaper reporter had one half his brainpower, we would be a much more respected profession.’’
According to David Halberstam’s ``The Powers That Be’’ Woodward wasn’t interested in the Watergate story at first or at least not interested in devoting 100 percent of his energy to , since he was pursuing other stories, including a local drug dealer who was selling millions of dollars’ worth of heroin in the Washington area. What Woodward really wanted was the prestigious federal court beat which had opened up when Mann decided to take a year-long sabbatical to accompany his wife, Caroline, a student in classical archaeology to the renowned American Academy in Rome so that she could finish her dissertation. In his book, Halberstam erroneously reported Mann’s wife was an architectural student.
In any event, the Post didn’t take kindly to one of their ``brightest young reporters’’ darting off to a foreign country in the midst of such an explosive story. According to Halberstam, the Post’s metro editor Harry Rosenfeld would later refer to Mann as ``the reporter who walked away from Watergate.’’
When asked if he had any regrets about taking a sabbatical at such an inopportune time, Mann said, ``To put it less negatively than Harry's one-liner from long ago, I went off for a year to support the fledgling career of the woman whom I had just married, and who, now four decades later, I love more than ever. Back in the early 1970s, some of the Post's editors thought that while a woman should follow her husband's career all over the globe, a man should not follow his wife's career beyond the first taxi zone. I went off, Watergate certainly got covered just fine without me, and I certainly did just fine without Watergate."
After leaving the Post, Mann spent a couple of years with the Philadelphia Inquirer, then returned to Washington to cover the Supreme Court for the Baltimore Sun. Beginning in 1978, he started reporting for the Los Angeles Times, first covering the Supreme Court then as Beijing bureau chief in China from 1984 through 1987. Back on American soil, Mann later became a correspondent and columnist on foreign affairs based in the Times’ Washington Bureau.
During his reporting career at the Times, Mann had written two books, ``Beijing Jeep: The Short, Unhappy Romance of American Business in China’’ (1989) and ``About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton’’ (1999).
As the new millennium was drawing near, Mann gave serious thought to hanging up his reporter’s notebook to devote himself full-time to writing books. Unlike others who found the routine of writing books onerous and miserable until their book was finally completed, Mann actually enjoyed the process, more than he enjoyed the daily grind of newspaper deadlines. And with having one of his two children having already graduated from college, he thought the initial loss of income if he left the paper would still be financial feasible. So when the Times (who had just being taken over by the Tribune Company) offered an attractive buyout package in 2001 to its employees, Mann figured this was an exit strategy made to order. At the time, he didn’t have a clear blue print of what he wanted to do, but with his wife supporting whatever decision he made, Mann took the money and ran.
He tells me he ventured into the publishing field at just the right time. In 2001, the publishing industry was much healthier than it is today, and you didn’t have to be Stephen King to get published, making it much easier for new authors like Mann to break in.
With barely one foot out the door at the Times, Mann was offered a position as a writer-in-residence at one of the leading foreign-policy think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies where he would begin writing a book that would carefully scrutinize and examine the ideas embraced by George W. Bush’s foreign policy team. Since he had interviewed these officials and followed their careers over many years, dating back to the Ford and Reagan administrations, Mann figured he was well armed with background material on these cabinet members. He began the book soon after 9/11.
In writing a previous book about China, Mann came across declassified documents in the Ford Library involving Cheney and Rumsfeld several years earlier, information which prompted him to write the book. According to Mann, ``I had no idea when I started interviews in 2001 that, less than 18 months later, the people I was covering would be leading America into war with Iraq.’’
His finished product was ``Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet'' , published in 2004, which became an instant best-seller and still stands as one of the primary source materials on the Bush team.
Reviewing the book for the journal Foreign Affairs, Lawrence D. Freedman wrote: `` Journalists, rather than academics, are providing the essential reading on the origins and course of President George W. Bush's "war on terror." Fortunately, their skill at getting original material and then telling a good story…. is matched by a keen sense of historical context.’’
Soon after the release of ``Vulcans'' in 2004, Mann left the Center for Strategic and International Studies and took up residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, where he continues to write books at the Foreign Policy Institute, the school's internal think tank. Over the past eight years, Mann has written three books at SAIS and is preparing to begin his fourth. On occasion, he also teaches mini-courses or seminars on history and biography.
Never afraid to lunge into a contentious issue, especially one that he believes strongly in, after the publication of ``Vulcans'', Mann’s next book would be his most controversial when he returned to the subject he knows best: China. In 2007, Mann came out with ``The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression’’ , a slim pithy book which casts a suspicious eye over ``Washington think tanks’’ that advance certain theories about China and ignore others when it doesn’t fit into their financial or other self-interest paradigms. Mann, for instance, outlined two prevailing schools of thought erroneously advocated by American scholars and politicians: one that capitalist reforms in China will inevitably lead to democratic reforms; the other theory holds that China is headed for political and social collapse. In fact, Mann argues, both of these assumptions ignore the cold hard alternative reality, which is China may very well continue its rise as a formidable economic competitor and remain in good standing within the "international community’’ while continuing to be a repressive, one-party state.
``I think it's fair to say’’, Mann said, ``that mainstream China scholars hated the book, but I had the satisfaction of writing something I deeply believe, and to challenge the prevailing notion that American political leaders, up to and including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, had been regularly putting forward.’’
Beginning in 2005, Mann examined Ronald Reagan’s role in the end of the Cold War. He spent an academic semester in Germany as a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, where he was able to interview Helmut Kohl and a host of other people in the former West and East Germany about American policy in the late 1980s; this in addition to conducting a number of interviews with officials in Washington. The result was "The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War’’ , published in 2009. In the book, Mann argued, to the anger of many conservatives, that Reagan didn’t ``win’’ the Cold War by military strength; rather it came about largely through his skillful diplomacy with Mikhail Gorbachev, something liberals never gave the ``Great Communicator’’ enough credit for.
Much like his examination of George W. Bush’s foreign policy, Mann began writing a book soon after Barack Obama took office, evaluating his foreign policy actions, resulting in ``The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power’’ , which was published last June. After traveling the country promoting the book, Mann can say without hesitation that unlike during the Bush years, the country is more preoccupied with Mr. Obama’s domestic agenda than is with his foreign policy.
As for other projects in the works? Mann says, `` I'll keep on writing as long as it works.’’ He was asked to do a volume for the American Presidents Series , started by Arthur Schlesinger- which will be a collection of short biographies of American presidents, written mostly by historians, with a few written by other prominent authors or journalists like Mann. He was assigned a volume on George W. Bush. So any readers out there who might have some keen insight into Mr. Bush’s life or would care to share their childhood memories of the 43rd president, Mann would love to hear from you.
Aside from his professional projects, Mann informs me his wife is preparing to wind down her teaching duties at Howard University over the next couple of years (where she teaches classics) and both look forward to doing a great deal of traveling. Mann is even hoping to write "a book or two" during or about his travels.
He tells me his two kids are both grown, employed and married; and his first two grandchildren were born over the past two years, and a third is coming in December. ``Grandchildren are more fun than anything else’’ he says.
For a person who supposedly walked away from the Watergate story, Jim Mann, I’d say, has lived a productive, well-traveled life, one that most of us can only dream about.
-Bill Lucey
[email protected]
September 5, 2012
