Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first interview with Richard Nixon, in his New York office in the summer of 1985, I set my tape recorder on the table beside his armchair. He stared at the machine. "That's one of those new tape recorders," he said admiringly. "They're so much better than the old tape recorders...
...occurred to me, driving toward what was now my third interview with Nixon, at his home in Saddle River, N.J. (I had been there once before at a dinner last spring), that in fact I had always thought of Nixon as a comic character, a dark and serious American comic character, like someone out of Twain. Comic in the Checkers speech. Comic in the "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" farewell following his defeat in the California gubernatorial election in 1962. In the clownish 5 o'clock shadow of the first Nixon-Kennedy television debate...
...Checkers speech effected not Nixon's disgrace but his political rescue; and we did have Nixon to kick around some more; and if one reviews the tapes, it is easy to conclude that he actually won the TV debate with Jack Kennedy; and he was a crook. So there. With Nixon, every circumstance eventually turns out to be funnier than he is. The nation he has trod these 75 years, the framework for his antics, is itself a dark and serious comedy, simultaneously rejecting and accepting everything in its midst; a riot, a scream. Sometimes (rarely) Nixon laughs aloud...
REAGAN was ironically the first president able to repair the damage Nixon did to the status of the Oval Office in the eyes of Americans. Yet Reagan--with 115 indictments credited to his administration, the embarassing calls for the resignation of Attorney General Edwin Meese III and the scandals of Irangate--has done nearly as much damage to the country as Nixon's crimes did. The difference is between Nixon's obviously deceitful intent and Reagan's inability to comprehend the situations involving...
...however, it may be too late for change. Nixon is already listened to by many people. His party has already forgiven him for the crimes he committed against the nation. The President has already accepted him as an expert on public policy. But if we are already willing to overlook Nixon's manipulations, lies and utter disrespect for the highest office and laws of the land, then the damage he did to the ideals of the nation is irreversible...