{"id":1209,"date":"2009-06-04T21:59:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T21:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.georgethomasclark.com\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2010-06-14T21:59:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T21:59:34","slug":"richard-nixon-rebuts-frostnixon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgethomasclark.com\/richard-nixon-rebuts-frostnixon\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Nixon Rebuts Frost\/Nixon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Don\u2019t for a second think I\u2019m upset by this new <em>Frost\/Nixon<\/em> movie.\u00a0 My enemies again tried to get Nixon and again they failed.\u00a0 Watch documentary films of my speeches and interviews and you\u2019ll hear an unusually articulate politician.\u00a0 Actor Frank Langella portrayed me as a stiff-necked and tormented bumbler. \u00a0If you know Nixon the leader, you understand my political adroitness.\u00a0 Either Langella is himself a bumbler or incapable of serious characterization.\u00a0 I therefore view his work and this film as comedy.\u00a0 In that respect, it wasn\u2019t bad.\u00a0 I can occasionally laugh at my idiosyncrasies, even when exaggerated.<\/p>\n<p>After watching this liberal romp, which culminated with a broken Dick Nixon almost groveling as he spouts mea culpa, I reviewed my real interviews with dashing David Frost, the young British television personality.\u00a0 I hope you don\u2019t mind if I\u2019m candid and say I looked pretty damn good for a guy sixty-four.\u00a0 And though I cannot describe myself as charming, in the style of a Jack Kennedy, I noted warmth and decency that millions of Americans appreciated during the quarter century they twice elected me to the House of Representatives, once the Senate, two times as Vice President, and, always a rare historical achievement, twice as President of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Half of Americans and many entertainers like David Frost and Dan Rather still want me to confess to some horrible crime at the Watergate office and apartment complex.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to do it, and please don\u2019t attribute that to some newspeak denial on my part.\u00a0 Permit me, instead, to emphasize what happened: some operatives employed by CREEP \u2013 Committee to Reelect the President \u2013 and acting without my knowledge much less approval, broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention and were arrested while bugging and burglarizing the place.<\/p>\n<p>I should have immediately denounced and distanced myself from them but am a loyal trooper so could not do that.\u00a0 In retrospect we know I was foolish.\u00a0 But I had no corrupt motive.\u00a0 I merely tried to contain things politically.\u00a0 The more I tried to contain, the deeper I sank into quicksand.\u00a0 Rather than throw me a rope, my enemies shoved a sword into my belly and twisted it with relish, and I suppose I would\u2019ve done the same.\u00a0 I know goddamn well I would have.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, no matter what I would\u2019ve said about a comparably vulnerable opponent, I did not commit an impeachable offense.\u00a0 In the House of Representatives I may have won or lost, but for six months the presidency would\u2019ve been crippled.\u00a0 To spare the nation, I graciously impeached myself by resigning.<\/p>\n<p>I do admit I was acting as lawyer for the defense of those arrested for breaking into Democratic headquarters, and by extension many others involved in noble but technically illegal acts to preserve my essential presidency.\u00a0 I suppose a reasonable person could call this a cover-up.\u00a0 But was it really a cover-up?\u00a0 Following the election I could\u2019ve granted everyone clemency and it all would\u2019ve gone away.\u00a0 But clemency would\u2019ve been wrong.<\/p>\n<p>After being chased by jackals for two years, I\u2019m not ashamed to say I cried for the first time since Eisenhower died.\u00a0 I had let my comrades down.\u00a0 And I had let down the American people.\u00a0 <em>Frost\/Nixon <\/em>got that factually correct but Langella was no Nixon in conveying the pain I felt after botching things and making countless bad judgments.\u00a0 I know my heart was in the right place.\u00a0 The man at the top must have a heart.\u00a0 But his head must always rule his heart.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I\u2019m fortunate Watergate still rivets so many.\u00a0 They\u2019re more interested in a two-bit break-in than the fact my administration, and that of my predecessor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, issued bomb and invade orders in Vietnam and Cambodia that killed two million Asians and fifty-seven thousand Americans.\u00a0 Of course, that was Johnson\u2019s war.\u00a0 I inherited it.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time I\u2019m sad Watergate obscures how I opened the diplomatic door to China, when only a staunch anti-communist could have done so, and improved Soviet-American relations, and became the first president in the Nuclear Age to reduce those weapons.\u00a0 And don\u2019t forget I got rid of the draft and introduced some important environmental legislation.\u00a0 Those achievements would be more appreciated if at the top of my infamous Enemies List there hadn\u2019t stood the name: Richard Milhous Nixon.<\/p>\n<p>Sources: Watergate portion of David Frost interviewing Richard Nixon in 1977; <em>Frost\/Nixon<\/em>, the movie; numerous articles, including mine listed below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don\u2019t for a second think I\u2019m upset by this new Frost\/Nixon movie.\u00a0 My enemies again tried to get Nixon and again they failed.\u00a0 Watch documentary films of my speeches and interviews and you\u2019ll hear an unusually articulate politician.\u00a0 Actor Frank Langella portrayed me as a stiff-necked and tormented bumbler. \u00a0If you know Nixon the leader,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,37,7,49,102],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Richard Nixon Rebuts Frost\/Nixon - George Thomas Clark<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/georgethomasclark.com\/richard-nixon-rebuts-frostnixon\/\" \/>\n<meta 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