Frost Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews

Frost Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews (1977)

What is most fascinating, looking back on this one-of-a-kind television interview between David Frost and disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon, is the inherent civility in it all. Believe it or not there was a time in televised American political discourse where the participants did not quickly resort to shouting, name calling and the simple recitation of beleaguering partisan talking points.
The conversation here is adversarial but cordial. Nixon was never more candid. His lies and obfuscation are still ubiquitous but there is a tinge of remorse and sadness about them. His anecdotes are a tad more melancholy; the fake, jackal grin a little more forced.
While he does not admit to criminal intent there is a moment of reflection which Frost manipulates him into which does force an apology, however coerced and mild, that is beyond anything a current American politician would deign to offer either his opponents or us commoners.
All through the interview I continued to imagine George W. Bush in this same scenario. Beady eyes, beak nose and lizard brain not really grasping the questions. Staring blankly, forcing out that pathetic, condescending titter of his to deflect any deeper thought that might be required. And like Nixon, simply not understanding the harmful, perfidious turpitude that his administration practiced. But unlike Nixon, unable to speak in an intellectual capacity to either refute it or defend it.
It is most astounding to realize just how far the Republican Party has regressed to the point of chest thumps and grunts in as little time as the thirty years since these interviews took place.
Nixon now looks like a shrewd, political mastermind compared to a sniveling propagandist like Karl Rove. After all, it was Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that brought the Republican Party to its current prominence and paved the way for someone as infinitely stupid and inept as George W. Bush to become the leader of the former free world.
Come to think of it, that Dick Nixon was an evil man.