Nixon's penultimate days - 'The Final Days' TV drama - column

National Review, Dec 8, 1989 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Nixon's Penultimate Days The reaction by Richard Nixon to the dramatization of The Final Days was one of massive retaliation: he changed his credit card from AT&T (the program's sponsor) to Sprint. He did this, by the way, without previewing the film, and indeed no one in his right mind would have expected him to re-experience the tortures of 1972-74. One cannot imagine Sir Thomas More or Joan of Arc taking satisfaction from visiting again the events that led to their torture and execution. On the other hand, Leonard Garment, counsel to Mr. Nixon and a true cosmopolite, exploded in rage after seeing the film, denouncing it and all its implications in a New York Times Op-Ed piece.

Here is a view from someone unattached to the events of Watergate: In my judgment, the production was superb, and the characterization of Richard Nixon a masterpiece. If there is a prize out there for artistic impersonation, it should go to actor Lane Smith. One pauses to express gratitude that he had no part in the writing of the lines, as witness the words with which he expressed himself to a television interviewer. ("When they got after Nixon, there were more people investigating him than ever investigated the Kennedy assassination. Imagine this guy on the end of all this negativity directed against him, and it amounts to great proportions. This is Greek tragedy." This is Impossible Prose.) The Richard Nixon of The Final Days is a man who made a relatively trivial mistake in judgment but saw it magnified into a cosmic event which dominated the course of nations.

And the nobility of the outcome of it all is hard to deny. There is fleeting reference in the three-hour drama to the detection of Spiro Agnew as a petty thief, about whom nothing more was ever heard. But the obstinate loyalty accorded to Nixon could not have been inspired by a lesser man, and is all the more striking given his obvious weaknesses. When he appears in the living room of the White House to inform his family that he has decided to resign, his son-in-law, lawyer Ed Cox, warns him: "They won't let you alone. They hate you with a passion."

Nixon reacts by wondering out loud to his lawyer, Fred Buzhardt, "Will I be prosecuted?"

"Impossible to say."

"Well, if they want to put me in jail, let them. At least that will give me time to do some thinking. All the best writing is done from jail. Take Gandhi." Buzhardt tries to console Nixon by telling him that if other Presidents had been subjected to similar scrutiny, almost certainly every one of them would have left office in similar circumstances. So Leonard Garment tells us that words were put in his mouth he did not utter. Or--more accurately--not enough words were put in his mouth which he did utter. And he flatly denies the moving scene in which Nixon and Kissinger descent to their knees, under the prodding of Nixon, to seek divine help, a scene that ends with Nixon prostrate on the floor in tears. To which one can only say: Perhaps it didn't happen, but if it did, it adds to every inclination to esteem the man, Richard Nixon: the victim of the most lethal of all Richard Nixon's enemies, Richard Nixon.

The salient dramatic point is that never in modern times has there been such a resurrection. Fifteen years after the most ignoble departure from the White House in history, Richard Nixon is in China, plying his international wares. Three years ago he received a standing ovation from the Washington press corps. He has written a half-dozen books which have been seriously reviewed. He is widely respected by professional diplomats all over the world.

And, in their own way, the American people, viewing his weakness, recognize it as very nearly universal in character. That little mistake, which began as a banana peel and ended as the last days of Pompeii. It is a universal theme, celebrated with great pitch and wit by Tom Wolfe in his Bonfire novel. The drama can only serve to bring the American people closer to Richard Nixon, and that surely is what, above all other things, he has wanted.