WaPo's review of Woodward suggests that the White House is exactly the way everyone else describes it, right? Everyone around him understands there's no President, just this surreal situation with an Orangutan roaming the Oval Office and no one allowed to do anything about it.
I do regret, though, that everyone just kind of shook their heads and said, "Nope, we can't let an Orangutan make that kind of decision" when he said this: 
I can't say I find this sentiment unsympathetic, either.
