Bush should go see Frost/Nixon for a pick-me-up
How alike are Richard Nixon and George Bush? This was the question debated at the screening of the movie Frost/Nixon in Washington this week. Director Ron Howard, historian Robert Dallek, and author James Reston, who was a researcher for Frost at the time he taped the debates, all thought the movie was very relevant to the present-day occupant of the Oval Office. Fox News' Chris Wallace objected. During the question-and-answer period, he argued that Bush was not like Nixon because even if you accept the notion that they abused their power in similar ways, Bush did so to defend the country. Nixon was only trying to save his own skin.
This is a fascinating discussion and one worth pondering—but it's beside the point. Or, more accurately, it's beside the point of the film. Nixon/Frost is not really about Nixon's abuses of power. It's about a superstar interviewer and a tortured ex-president. If there's any message in this great movie for President Bush, it's that he should take comfort: Nixon was only slightly more unpopular at the end of his presidency as Bush is now, and yet in the movie he comes across as relatively sympathetic. Perhaps Bush can look forward to a similar upgrade from history. Or at least from Hollywood.
Nixon seems sympathetic because we see him in lonely, human moments. The sympathy comes from the power of the close-up, something one of the film's characters muses on in a different context. James Reston, who is also a character in the film, tries to explain why the Frost interview was so powerful. He attributes much of it to the emotional resonance of the television close-up. When viewers in 1977 watched Nixon's face change as he talked about the absolute power of the presidency, it brought to life the madness that they had, until then, only read about....
Read entire article at John Dickerson in Slate
This is a fascinating discussion and one worth pondering—but it's beside the point. Or, more accurately, it's beside the point of the film. Nixon/Frost is not really about Nixon's abuses of power. It's about a superstar interviewer and a tortured ex-president. If there's any message in this great movie for President Bush, it's that he should take comfort: Nixon was only slightly more unpopular at the end of his presidency as Bush is now, and yet in the movie he comes across as relatively sympathetic. Perhaps Bush can look forward to a similar upgrade from history. Or at least from Hollywood.
Nixon seems sympathetic because we see him in lonely, human moments. The sympathy comes from the power of the close-up, something one of the film's characters muses on in a different context. James Reston, who is also a character in the film, tries to explain why the Frost interview was so powerful. He attributes much of it to the emotional resonance of the television close-up. When viewers in 1977 watched Nixon's face change as he talked about the absolute power of the presidency, it brought to life the madness that they had, until then, only read about....