Word: hysteria
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...clear this die-hard Nixon loyalist believes the major blame for the national trauma of Watergate rests not with the former president, but with the media people and politicians. Price speaks of the creation of a "national hysteria over Watergate, fueled by the "obsessive press coverage" and "the climate on Capitol Hill a lot of demagogues helped to orchestrate...
...entire Watergate hysteria was a natural product of the double standard applied by the press and politicians in judging Richard Nixon, Price says. If the Democrats had been caught bugging Republican National Committee Headquarters in 1964, "I don't think it particularly would have been news." In those June days following the Watergate break-in, Nixon's top aides informed him that John Mitchell--his close friend, former U.S. Attorney General and then re-election campaign director--probably had prior knowledge of the break-in plan and Nixon asked the CIA to head off the FBI's investigation...
...this is a hollow argument, one that does little to bolster Nixon's defense. It is all too easy to forget, in reading Price's attack, that the two years of national hysteria over Watergate misdeeds, real or imagined, would not have occurred if Nixon had not initiated the coverup in the days following the June 1972 break-in. Moreover it is certainly inadequate to argue that Nixon's actions of June 23, 1972 represented the president's sole obstruction of justice. His actions for more than two years following those June days constituted one ongoing obstruction of justice...
...apart. But there is also a persistent feeling that he is hiding behind a pat routine. When Dreyfuss portrays the same boyish insecurities in role after role, one begins to wonder if he has anything else to give. Unlike Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, two other specialists in masculine hysteria, he has never come across as a fully rounded adult...
Winkler's ambitions are admirable. His greatest fans are kids, and he deserves credit for leading them to a film that does not pander to the Fonzie hysteria. His performance is not bad, either. He works hard, in the manner of an intermediate acting student, and occasionally his character comes alive. The same cannot be said of Heroes. This film is as flat as an average made-for-TV movie, though considerably more pretentious than most...