ABSTRACT
“I let down my friends,” former president Richard Nixon told David Frost in a paid television interview two and a half years after his resignation. “I let down the country. I let down our system of government…. I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.” In this carefully phrased attempt at an apology, Nixon in 1977 only just approaches the emotional point where Oliver Stone begins his drama of the disgraced president’s journey into self-understanding. While Nixon (1995) begins with President Nixon eight months before his resignation listening to his tapes and trying to comprehend how he lost his hold on the country, David Frost’s Nixon is out, but not down. “Let down” is a curious, noncommittal phrase meaning not much more than that Nixon disappointed his supporters, something all presidents could be said to do to some extent. Like most of Nixon’s utterances on Watergate, this one sounds confessional, without confessing anything. The Nixon of the Frost interviews is a New Old Nixon, embattled, struggling as always to salvage his manhood. Because it must be protected and fiercely fought for, this masculinity is apparently either highly coveted or so fragile that it’s constantly in danger of being shown up as an unapproachable illusion. It goes without saying that the actual Nixon held to the first view. He told Frost, “I brought myself down. I gave them the sword. And they stuck it in. And they twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I’d been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.”
