FROST/NIXON GOES BEHIND THE MINDGAME
In 1977, three years after President Nixon resigned from the presidency, talk-show host David Frost conducted four televised interviews. Not politically savvy, he was interested in advancing his career by sitting opposite the biggest newsmaker in the world. Directed by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon not only goes behind the scenes to expose how both Frost (played by Michael Sheen) and Nixon (played by Frank Langella) were stage managed but also serves as a paradigm for a possible interview with President Bush about his legacy of far more war crimes than Nixon ever imagined. (Just as Bush has brushed aside culpability for claiming WMD falsely as a pretext for invading Iraq, Nixon claimed that his secret bombing of Cambodia was to destroy a nonexistent Viet Cong “bamboo” headquarters.) In the first three interviews, Nixon comes out the victor over a lightweight Frost. Then Frost does his homework, finding statements in a court record regarding the plea bargain by Charles Colson, Chief Counsel to Nixon, which contradicted Nixon’s previous public statement that he knew nothing about the Watergate cover-up. Confronted by that contradiction in the final interview, Nixon is thrown off balance, claims that anything he did was legal because he was president, avers that no one else shares that view (unaware of Dick Cheney’s opinion on the matter), and apologizes for wrongdoing for the first time on camera. What the film fails to mention, however, is that in accepting President Gerald Ford’s pardon in 1974, Nixon had already admitted guilt, which is a condition of any pardon, though journalists have never reported that fact. The Political Film Society has nominated Frost/Nixon as best film exposé of 2008. MH