Radio
Comedy of errors
Michael Vestey
Tricky Dickie' Nixon, to me the most fascinating and complex President of the United States this century, was the subject of a riveting and surprisingly sympathetic play on Radio Four this week, American Faith: Richard Milhous Nixon's Road to Watergate (Monday). Perhaps it was my own, subjective, interpretation of the play but I thought Nixon came out of it very well; it's possible this was not the intention of the production.
After all, many still view Jack and Bobby Kennedy in a rosy light: they were young, rich and glamorous, appealed to liberals, and they did not have 5 o'clock shadow. But they were so crooked and corrupt they make Nixon look saintly. He didn't rig bal- lots like the Kennedys, he wasn't involved with the mafia, nor was he a serial adulter- er or an adulterer at all, and he certainly would not have been suspected, as the Kennedy brothers are, of murdering an embarrassment like Marilyn Monroe. He inherited Vietnam from JFK and LBJ. Lovers of Camelot forget it was Kennedy who expanded Eisenhower's limited risk presence in South Fast Asia to one of `broad commitment'.
As Mike Waller's gripping play, directed by Ned Chaillet, reminds us, Nixon regard- ed the Watergate episode as a comedy of errors and with the benefit of hindsight we can see that it was. But Nixon was forced from office in 1974 mainly because he was a Republican and had made enemies from his anti-communist early years. The con- sensual verdict, is that his crime was to cover up his aides' involvement in the break-in at the Democratic HQ in Wash- ington but we know that's hypocrisy. Most politicians try to cover up their mistakes (it's called damage limitation nowadays), some disguise their policies because they know the electorate won't like them (Edward Heath and his real aims when he took Britain into what was then the Com- mon Market is an outstanding home-grown example). In America the Washington Post concealed Kennedy's seaminess, not just then but for years later. Look, too, at how indifferent that newspaper is towards the activities of the Clintons.
As Nixon's wife Pat (Tara Hugo) says to their daughter Julie (Laura Brook), 'All they can see is what they see, honey.' Colin Stinton captures it well. Nixon's greatest flaw was paranoia. Although he correctly judged that the Democratic establishment, politicians and the media, were after him there was a Boer-like laager mentality at his White House and he surrounded himself with fanatically loyal and equally paranoid staff who were midwives to the break-in.
When told in this play that the Demo- crat-dominated Congress was after him, he reacts with astonishment, especially as the Kennedys had once bugged his aircraft. Most of us are familiar with the circum- stances surrounding Watergate and the play doesn't dwell on them too much. More interesting, in some ways, is his early life, brought up on the wrong side of the tracks with a father who gave him the work ethic. Two of his brothers died young and the experience helped shape his determination to succeed.
The most gripping part of the play covers the years when he was a rising star in the party and nominated as Eisenhower's vice- presidential running mate. He's asked by a fellow Republican who he's sleeping with. Nixon says nobody. 'I just work.' And he did. He was a rarity — there were no mis- tresses, no Kennedyesque 30-second stands, no Johnsonian bunk-ups in the LBJ suite in Austin, Texas, no Clintonian priapism while out jogging. He really did observe the so-called family values he espoused.
Sophisticated minds recoil at this and some of Nixon's tactics. There's a scene in the play when Eisenhower is threatening to dump Nixon from the ticket because of accusations of pocketing campaign slush fund money for his own use. In reality, Ike wasn't impressed when Nixon told him, 'General, there comes a time when you have to shit or get off the pot.' So he was urged to appeal to the nation in a make-or- break televised NBC broadcast in which he made his notorious Checkers speech: 'We did get something, a gift ... a little cocker spaniel in a crate, all the way from Texas ... And our little girl Tricia, the six-year- old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids love that dog, and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it!' Shameless stuff, of course, but that speech clinched it and Nixon stayed on the ticket, going on to become vice-president in 1952. It shouldn't be forgotten that Franklin Roosevelt did the same in 1944, using his scottie Fala to help him gain re- election. Roosevelt said he didn't resent Republican attacks on him and his family but Fala did. It always pays in American politics to have a dog. The Clintons need a poodle desperately, something more canine than the Washington Post. There is something of Shakespearean tragedy to this play. While it helps us to gain a clearer picture of Nixon he will always remain an enigma.
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