2006-2007 Season: Nixon's Nixon
Nixon’s Nixon
by Michael Butler
THE RISE AND FALL OF RICHARD NIXON is the closest thing American politics has to a Shakespearean tragedy (or comedy, depending on your point of view). Watergate was the most sensational and damaging political scandal in American history. In August of 1974, facing imminent impeachment only a year and a half after a landslide re-election victory, President Nixon did the unthinkable: he resigned.
Watergate: The name has become part of our political lexicon; scandals big and small now have “gate” appended to their names. “Cover up” is a charge of political misconduct that has become almost humdrum, but Watergate was its coming-out party. Watergate launched the era of no-holds-barred media coverage we enjoy today and because of it, the politicians have zipped up, ironed out and become so much less spontaneous and incautious than Nixon ever was. Our national fascination with Watergate was not so much that a politician did something illegal, or improper. It was the outrageous nature of the men it revealed.
Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, were two of the most intriguing political figures of the 20th century. Both were men of powerful contradictions. Nixon, a lower middle-class Californian of Quaker roots, was sentimental yet vulgar (or in his own words, a real “expletive deleted”). Kissinger was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Nixon was ambitious yet self-destructive, and a canny debater yet inarticulate and incoherent (as the infamous tapes showed). Kissinger was alternately arrogant, vulnerable, vain and insecure. Both shared a penchant for secrecy, a deep mistrust of almost everybody and a romantic view of themselves as loners. Never were two different men so similar. The final irony of Nixon: He was paranoid and they were out to get him. More than any other nation, we Americans throw our public figures into the arena of scrutiny, let loose the lions of the media and watch with horror and glee. Watergate -Iran/Contra - Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas - T.V. was there and so were we. It must have been the same for Elizabethan audiences watching Shakespeare’s history plays on stage. They would not have actually remembered Richard III (the original Tricky Dick), but the vividness of their history would have given the proceedings the same theatrical kick we get watching a politician rise and fall in real time.
Playwright Russell Lees writes, “The play is not so much about historical personages and their character traits as it is about the very human and personal struggles involved in retaining or relinquishing great power and coming to terms with one’s legacy.” What will Nixon’s legacy finally be? Incidentally, historians now say that Richard III was a good and kind king, not the ruthless butcher Shakespeare created. Truth and fiction eating off the same plate again, leaving history to clean up the mess. Will the real Richard Nixon please stand up?