Having one popularity-challenged president exit last week, seeing Ron Howard's Academy Award nominated film, Frost/Nixon, seemed apropos. As I watched an outstanding perfomance by Frank Langella as Richard Nixon. I remembered just how much I hated Nixon; how important it was to me when the press stood up to him (thank you, Dan). He had stretched the Vietnam war over far more American bodies than needed to die. It hit me that as much as I despised Bush 43, I did not despise him anywhere near as I did Nixon. But the film brought up another perspective for me.
Langellla's dower and thoughtful dramatics actually made me feel sad for Nixon, something I thought I was incapable of. He was a deeply flawed and lamentable man. But he wasn't an idiot. Paranoid, but not an idiot. He was intelligent enough to grasp just how alone he was. He was coherent enough to understand that he was full of self-hate and unhappy that he was who he was.
Plot point alert. During the final day of the Frost interview, Nixon broke, accepting for all the world to see and hear; that he was corrupt and READ THE REST OF THE NIXON-BUSH DIFFERENCES HERE.
Steve Young blogs at the appropriately named, steveyoungonpolitics.com