Presidents Are Acting Not Illegally More And More

When Richard Nixon told David Frost in April 1977, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal," he was talking not about political burglaries and campaign dirty tricks (though his operatives did all that, too) but a leader's sovereign powers during wartime. That Ron Howard and his screenwriter, Peter Morgan, suggested otherwise in "Frost/Nixon" was one of the few disappointments in an otherwise fine movie. Continuing his argument, Nixon said:

[I]t has been...argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we’re all talking about.

Tom Campbell, Chapman University's law school dean, battled President Clinton over Kosovo when he was serving in Congress. He argues that when presidents grasp for broader foreign policy and war-making prerogatives, judges and Congress wax timid, and especially so since Sept. 11. On the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, John Dean, who turned on Nixon during the the Watergate investigations of 1973-74, says recent presidents have widened the realm of "not illegal" far more than 37. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Executive orders issued by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of Sept. 11 claimed power for the Oval Office to ignore U.S. laws and international treaties.

President Obama has retained some of those extraordinary wartime powers, and his use of drones to attack terrorist suspects has drawn accusations of international law violations.

"I don't think Richard Nixon, in his darkest hour, would have authorized torture," said Dean...

See No Evil

Steve Donoghue demolishes Don Fulsom's hack job Nixon's Darkest Secrets and then turns on Nixon:

[T]he greatest disappointment of Nixon's Darkest Secrets is how minor those secrets come across as being when measured against the full evil of the man. When Nixon went before the nation on Aug. 8, 1974, and announced his resignation -- only a few days after a White House tape recording surfaced proving beyond question that he'd known everything about the Watergate break-in -- something unspoken and completely vital to the nation cracked along its entire axis. And three years later (during a 1977 interview with David Frost), when Nixon said, "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal," that crack shattered open and has never been closed since. It was an inky stain on the nation, and it spread forward in time even to the present, with the United States launching two wars, one of them illegal, mainly at the urging of two former Nixon acolytes, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the vice-president and defense secretary under president George W. Bush. The real Nixon was far darker than the bumbling cartoon villain Fulsom paints here -- perhaps the sharpest irony of them all.

When Nixon released the transcript of the June 23, 1972 "smoking gun" conversation, we learned that he'd briefly acquiesced in a Watergate cover-up, not that he'd "known everything" about the break-in. Still, it's actually reassuring to see the emergence of a critique of Nixon and Watergate based on his national security rather than alleged criminal predispositions. Donoghue traces a direct line between Nixon's "not illegal" formulation and Bush's Iraq war (presumably the one he thinks was illegal). Ironically, most people think the theory had to do with the Watergate break-in or coverup, but Nixon was actually offering a justification of surveillance of domestic militants during the Vietnam war. In 2008, when the misunderstanding was perpetuated in Ron Howard's film "Frost/Nixon," I wondered if Howard and scriptwriter Peter Morgan had blurred the record because post-Sept. 11 audiences would've been inclined to agree with Nixon that presidents have extra-constitutional authority to protect the the U.S. from violent extremists. Some may well think, as Donoghue does, that such impulses make a leader evil. I'll bet most probably don't.
Hat tip to Dona Christensen

The Alpha And Omega Of A Great Love Story

Antidotes to cruel, unproven denigrations of Richard and Pat Nixons' marriage are the passionate letters the young southern California attorney wrote to his beloved during their courtship in the 1930s, such as this one:

Somehow on Tuesday there was something electric in the usually almost stifling air in Whittier. And now I know. An Irish gypsy who radiates all that is happy and beautiful was there. She left behind her a note addressed to a struggling barrister who looks from a window and dreams. And in that note he found sunshine and flowers, and a great spirit which only great ladies can inspire. Someday let me see you again? In September? Maybe?

At the end of their first date, Mr. Nixon proclaimed to Miss Ryan that he intended to marry her. She wasn't quite as sure. The letters he used to help close the deal go on display this week at the Nixon library, where longtime curator Olivia Anastasiadis (below), couldn't be prouder, according to the AP:

These letters are fabulous. It's a totally different person from the Watergate tapes that people know. President Nixon started out as an idealistic young man ready to conquer the world and with Pat Ryan he knew he could do it. There's a lot of hope, there's a lot of tenderness and it's very poetic. He loved her, he was absolutely enthralled by her and that's all he thought about.

Those alleging that 37's tender feelings for his bride didn't survive the rigors of their public lives should have heard what his last chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor, who knew both Nixons as well as any of his aides, said in an October 2008 talk at the Nixon library to women serving in government:

The President and Mrs. Nixon enjoyed nothing better than the opportunity to make each other laugh. Since he had spent so much of his working life on the road, the delight that he took at home with his First Lady and their four grandchildren is impossible to overstate.

One day in the late 1980s, I followed the President home from the office because I had forgotten to give him a file he has asked me for before he left to go home for lunch with Mrs. Nixon, which was his daily practice.

I raced into the kitchen, which had a one-way glass wall looking out over the deck where he and Mrs. Nixon would eat lunch when the weather was good.

Just as I arrived in the kitchen, the President was walking across the deck toward Mrs. Nixon, who was waiting to greet him with a smile and hug. He pulled out her chair and helped her take her seat. She smiled at something he said. I’m pretty sure she blushed.

When the Nixons’ critics say, as they sometimes do, that their relationship lacked affection and intimacy, I always smile, remembering that precious, private moment. I even told director Ron Howard about it when he visited the Library last year. We’ll have to see if he includes the scene in his upcoming movie, “Frost/Nixon”!

He didn't, but that's okay. Kathy (shown here with Nixon in Shanghai in 1993) remembers.

Presidential Plattitudes

When Oliver Platt blazes onto the screen as White House counsel Oliver Babish in "West Wing" 2:19, called in to grapple with a brewing scandal about President Bartlett's health, he's an instant Nixon three-fer. In his first scene, fumbling with a microcassette recorder, he says, "It's stuck on record. It won't stop recording things. It's just what you want lying around the White House counsel's office, because there's never been a problem with that before." Platt also shows up in the best Nixon movie ever, "Frost/Nixon," playing one of British journalist David Frost's researchers, Bob Zelnick.

Finally, Platt's the son of diplomat Nicholas Platt, who accompanied Nixon to China in 1972 and later served as president of the Asia Society. The actor talked about the Nixon-Platt connection in an April 2010 interview with NPR's Terry Gross:

We were living in Japan when Nixon resigned. And I remember, very clearly, we were driving out to the country and the news came over the radio. My parents pulled the car over and they told us all to listen.... [My father] actually just published a memoir about it called China Boys, about the opening of China; and he really had a remarkable perspective on it. He literally - he has a home movie, you know, of Nixon getting off the plane and shaking Zhou Enlai's hand and he's standing literally, you know, 15 yards away from him when that happened. And so he really, I think my father had complicated feelings about it.

Thai, Everyone!

From the DVD of "Frost/Nixon," a little documentary about the Nixon Library featuring director Ron Howard and, oh yeah, President Nixon's last chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor, and me. Thai translation provided for your convenience.

Kathy/John and "Frost/Nixon"

When director Ron Howard visited the Nixon Library in September 2007 to film scenes for "Frost/Nixon," his PR company filmed interviews with President Nixon's last chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor, and me about the Library and its genesis as a privately run institution. (It's now part of the National Archives.) That's Kathy and I below with Frank Langella, who skillfully portrayed our former boss.

The "Frost/Nixon" DVD came out this week with a brief special feature on the Library that Kathy and I essentially narrate. Quite a thrill and an honor for a couple of old Nixon hands.

Ought To Have Done Vs. Ought Not To Have Done

Though he praises Frank Langella's subtle, powerful portrayal, Carl Bernstein doesn't like "Frost/Nixon" because it makes Richard Nixon look too good.

That, at least, was journalist and Nixon biographer Elizabeth Drew's assessment, which Bernstein embraced during a restaurant chat with buddies. Drew actually called director Ron Howard "dishonorable." Specifically, Bernstein wishes filmmakers had included RN's denial of an illegal coverup of the Watergate burglary.

If that's a sin (and we may discuss it if you wish), then it's a sin of omission. Neither Bernstein nor anyone else (besides The New Nixon's Robert Nedelkoff and us other true believers) acts offended about another transgression, namely the film's contention that RN's famous "it's not illegal" comment was made about Watergate rather than a controversial plan for cracking down on dissenters during wartime. The demerits of the never-implemented Huston Plan notwithstanding, Howard and playwright-screenwriter Peter Morgan may have worried that, in the age of terrorism, some moviegoers would nod their heads at a President saying that extra steps to combat violent groups such as the Weather Underground were justified.

So what's worse, Carl: Leaving something out, or rearranging the narrative to avoid burdening the audience with ambiguity?

Frank Langella 1, Bonehead 0

The "Frost/Nixon" actor coolly disses a guy with a video camera and not enough to do. Especially deft: He graciously stops and thanks a legitimate well-wisher without ending up engaging the bonehead. Well played!

Just Another Hollywood Nixon

At The Ticker, published by Baruch College in New York City, Alfonso Guerriero shares comments on "Frost/Nixon" from an authoritative source, Ray Price (shown at right in the photo with other members of RN's interview prep team, Diane Sawyer and Ken Khachigian; missing is The New Nixon's Frank Gannon, who was probably either playing the piano or taking the picture):

Price, 78, knew President Nixon for 27 years while working as one of his speechwriters. He wrote both of Nixon’s inauguration speeches, and he helped write Nixon’s resignation speech in 1974. When Nixon resigned from the presidency, Price continued being a loyal friend and collaborated with the president on two of his 10 books before Nixon’s death in 1994. He also helped Nixon prepare for Frost’s interviews, along with...Sawyer and other aides.

Price did not hesitate when offering his thoughts on Frost/Nixon and Frank Langella’s portrayal of the President saying, "[the film] grossly distorted the facts and reduced his character to a Hollywood caricature."

Michael's Preferred Nixon

The Philadelphia Daily News also noted the way Michael Douglas (or Oscar's scriptwriter) snubbed Sir Anthony:

Having previous winners laud nominees in specific categories got good reviews.

We found the approach touching in the actress categories. It didn't work quite as well for the men.

Especially when Michael Douglas repeatedly praised Frank Langella's Oscar-nominated performance as Richard Nixon in "Frost/Nixon" as having rendered all others obsolete. Anthony Hopkins, who played Nixon in Oliver Stone's 1995 bio-pic, was standing practically right next to him onstage.

Getting Richard Right

Ann Hornady gets it wrong in the Washington Post:

In "Frost/Nixon," Frank Langella didn't really look or sound like Richard Nixon. If he had, his performance as the disgraced former president would have had little more artistic heft than an old Rich Little bit on "The Tonight Show." Instead, he developed an outsize, almost Shakespearean physical and vocal persona, giving Nixon a brooding, bearlike physicality and a growling baritone completely at odds with Nixon's actual cadences. The reason it succeeds is that it's a full characterization, grounded in Langella's own preparation for the role and defined by every single choice he makes, from where he focuses his eyes to the way he walks across a room.

Perhaps Hornady knew President Nixon and had the opportunity to watch him interact with family members, friends, and aides. I doubt it, because if she had, I believe she would have been unnerved by how effectively, and recognizably, Langella (shown studying RN's own Frost interview notes in my old Nixon Foundation office) portrayed him. My guess is that Hornady only knows the public Nixon, from his speeches and press conferences.

Those who experienced the public and private man, as I and many others did, couldn't help but discern the difference between the two which I've always attributed to his introverted temperament. The public Nixon was studied and sometimes unsure, the private Nixon avuncular, attentive, inquisitive, dryly funny, lightly self-deprecating, almost exactly like Langella's performance. As Langella himself has made clear, he recognized something of his own nature and personal history in the President, hence the synergy. Mr. Nixon's voice deepened in his seventies, so Langella even gets the baritone growl right. As for the actor's greater size, it helped him communicate the gravitas Nixon projected from five-foot-ten. When he entered a room, people noticed, because of who he was, and because he had wielded great power.

RN's Crimes Now Include Use Of Third Person

The owners of a home in a Dana Point neighborhood reveal why it was chosen as the set for the real-life (as opposed to the Ron Howard-staged) interviews between President Nixon and David Frost: Quiet toilet. Orange County Register reporter Vik Jolly also takes the time to disparage the tone and syntax of the inscription 37 left in the owners' guest book when the interviews were done:

In it, on April 20, 1977, using a distanced, third-person reference, Nixon wrote: "To Martha and Harold Smith with appreciation for their hospitality during the week I stayed in their beautiful home."

For the life of me I can't figure out what Jolly thinks the former President should've written to avoid using the third person: "Hey, you -- thanks for the hang. Dick"?

If They're Hybrid Choppers, Use Stimulus Funds

President Obama is deciding whether to pay $11.2 billion to Lockheed Martin and its European partners for 28 helicopters for the White House fleet. Gene Boyer, who was President Nixon's chopper pilot, says it's a boondoggle. Other critics say the government should re-up with Connecticut's Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., which built most of the current fleet as well as the VH-3D Sea King now on display at the Nixon Library (which was good enough for Frank Langella during the filming of "Frost/Nixon").

Howard: Nixon "A True Visionary"

Hugh Hewitt finds "Frost/Nixon" director Ron Howard in an especially friendly mood:

Well, you know, [I learned] little things, like I didn’t know that he loved music, and that he’d really trained as a musician as a kid. And I knew a bit about his history. Going through the Nixon Library was exciting and enlightening, and I realized on a lot of levels how socially progressive he was, and what a true visionary he was.

Another Historic First

Dave Karger at EW.com:

With Frank Langella's nod for Frost/Nixon, Richard Nixon is the first president more than one man has been Oscar-nominated for playing. (Anthony Hopkins scored a nod for Nixon in 1996.)

"Being A President Is An Impossible Job"

As he has before, Ron Howard (shown on the set of "Frost/Nixon"), the ultimate boomer director, suggests he had a silent majoritarian perspective on the 37th President while he was in office. Stuart Jeffries interviews him at the Guardian as the film opens in England:

So, back then, did he despise Nixon? Is that also what tempted him to make the film? "Not before Watergate. In fact, he had done me a favour. I didn't particularly want to go to Vietnam and so, belatedly, he had at least done the thing he said he was going to do - which was get us out of Vietnam and undo the draft. I appreciated him for that." So it was thanks to Nixon that Howard never saw real combat. "I remember watching the interviews. Being a president is an impossible job - it's naive to think someone can do the job and not bend the law here and there."

The Seeds Of Regret

Jonathan Aitken is a former member of the British Parliament and author of Nixon: A Life (sadly and I hope temporarily out of print, though you can grab a copy here). A frequent visitor to San Clemente after President Nixon's resignation, including during his honeymoon with his first wife, he had a fascinating insider's account of the Nixon-Frost interviews in Saturday's London Daily Mail.

Aitken begins with a glimpse of the honeymoon visit:

[A]n awkwardly but determinedly romantic Richard Nixon presented us with a formal corsage of flowers, made delicate inquiries on how we were sleeping, and took immense pains in putting on a festive dinner party which he called 'La Casa Pacifica's welcome to the honeymooners from three happily married couples'. They turned out to be ex-President Nixon and his wife; David and Julie Eisenhower (President Ike's grandson and Nixon's daughter); and Congressman and Mrs Jimmy Roosevelt (FDR's son and daughter-in-law).

Having recently interviewing RN's then-chief of staff (played in "Frost/Nixon" by Kevin Bacon), Aitken describes what really happened after the former President successfully filibustered David Frost in their first videotaped exchanges:

As Colonel Jack Brennan tells it: 'Frost sent his aide, John Birt [later boss of the BBC], to see me. He said: "This has been terrible. We need more time."

'My immediate reaction was "Tough. We've kept our side of the deal: the taping is over."

'But later I talked it over with my staff. We all agreed that Nixon should voluntarily go further and express some regret.

'So I went to see the boss and I said to him: "Listen, if this ends the way it has, the world is going to say, there goes the same old Nixon."'

At first, Nixon was curtly dismissive of this criticism. But Brennan and his team persisted. Their argument was that some expression of regret for Watergate needed to be put on record....

'From that moment onwards,' recalled Brennan, 'I knew that Nixon was spending all his time preparing himself for how to say something that would not be a confession or an expression of guilt, yet would say sorry for what had happened.' Throughout his life, Richard Nixon had difficulty giving apologies. This one was the hardest of all.

RN Always Talked About The Altered Dominant

Composer Wes Flinn assesses composer Richard Nixon:

The tune is pretty straightforward, with a late-Romantic-cum-Tin-Pan-Alley harmonic structure. He likes the altered dominant (V7 becomes V+7, usually via a chromatic passing tone in the melody), and the phrase structure is regular - from what I heard, four-bar phrases are the order of the day.

Hey, Kathy: When Did Ron Meet Richard?

Peter Morgan (left), Ron Howard, and Kathy O'Connor

Apparently, you don't have watch "The View." Someone prepares a State Department-like memcon. From today's show:

Ron Howard appeared on the show. He received an Oscar nomination for best director for Frost/Nixon. He said that it is a real thrill and it never gets old. Ron said that it is a surprising and unusual story based on the behind-the-scenes drama of the interview. Barbara loved the play and the movie. She mentioned again that she did an interview with Nixon three years later that was unpaid and asked Ron if he was going to do her film. He said that he will see how this film does first.

Ron met Nixon once briefly and doesn’t think he would have seen the movie, noting that Tony Blair never saw The Queen. He said that Frank Langella did a wonderful job capturing Richard Nixon and has gotten a lot of positive feedback. He saw both actors in the play and wanted to make a movie version with them in it, but knew it would be a tough sell with the movie studio. Ron was sent audition tapes by Academy Award winning actors who wanted to be considered.

I'll have to ask my wife and Nixon colleague Kathy O'Connor when and where the P. and Howard met. When I was the former President's aide in the 1980s in New York, I got a call from Brian Grazer, Howard's production partner, who said that the director was interested in Nixon and wanted to do something that was more friendly than we might expect from Hollywood. Nothing came of it at the time, although by my lights "Frost/Nixon" fills the bill admirably.

At least I was able to fulfill my journalist mother's wish that the suggestion somehow be lodged at Hollywood's loftiest level that Tom Hanks one day be cast as Richard Nixon. I pitched it to Howard himself in the Nixon Foundation men's room when he and "Frost/Nixon" playwright Peter Morgan visited the Library in December 2006 as they were preparing to do the movie. The idea lived for at least 15 minutes, since a colleague overheard Howard ask Morgan in the elevator, "So what do you think about Tom for Nixon?" But Frank Langella (now nominated for best actor) already owned the part.

Franked Male

Charles McGrath, going deeper with "Frost/Nixon" actor Frank Langella that most reporters, reveals the key role played by a fellow Frank at The New Nixon as he prepared to portray 37:

To prepare for the role Mr. Langella visited the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., spent hours watching tape at the Paley Center for Media, the broadcasting museum in Manhattan and interviewed Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Frank Gannon — anyone he could think of who actually knew Nixon.

Read about Langella's visit to the Nixon Library here.