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Anyone who has faith in American democracy needs to take a step back and remember that in 1972, Richard Nixon was re-elected by a historically unprecedented majority. He defeated McGovern by some 18 million popular votes and by pretty much all of the electoral votes (McGovern appears to have won Massachusetts and Washington D. C. (and no surprise there; even Mondale managed to win D. C.)). Nixon was America�s political id. Pretty much all of the presidents from FDR onwards have done at least one absolutely unforgivable thing; some of them have made an entire career out of it. But only with Nixon do we see such brazenness, such shamelessness, such a vulgar public display of his own fundamental human indecency.
I have just watched Robert Altman�s Secret Honor (1984), which is the first Altman movie I�ve seen. It is essentially a one-man stage play (the credits call it a �political myth,� and it is reminiscent in some ways of Philip Roth�s satirical fantasy Our Gang) in which Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) stalks around his study, ranting into a tape recorder as he recalls his formative years and his tumultuous political career. In his essay for the Criterion release of the film, Michael Wilmington astutely compares Secret Honor to Samuel Beckett�s Krapp�s Last Tape, but this is not the European Krapp; this is Krapp as shady used car salesman; Krapp as corrupt local politician/demagogue; Krapp going on camera and weeping about his dog Checkers.
First and foremost, it is Krapp as American vulgarian. Everything that is ugly and cruel and vicious about American life is embodied by Hall�s Nixon, who at one point declares, �I am the American Dream! I am the American Nightmare!� My God, what will stick with me from this movie, more than anything else, is the sound of Nixon�s saliva sloshing about his mouth as he struggles to spit out his anathemas on Eisenhower, Kissinger, the Kennedys, and every conceivable minority group. I recall watching Bela Tarr�s The Turin Horse with a friend who was just horrified by the sound of the characters tearing, grinding, and cacophonously munching on their poor potato diet. It was like the very sound of squalor and despair. I had a similar reaction to Nixon�s saliva. I suppose it accumulated in his jowls during moments of silence and began to rush up over the tongue whenever he tried to speak. It is the bile and the bitterness and the self-loathing of a two-bit, snake-oil-peddling huckster.
It will be interesting to see who the Republicans run in 2016 (not interesting to watch for any extended period, mind you, but just interesting to see, once). So many Americans saw themselves in Bush, God-fearing, intellectually incurious, and always right, the facts be damned. John McCain was a Nixonian vulgarian, who called Vietnamese people gooks and described Chelsea Clinton as the White House dog. Mitt Romney was a blue-blooded WASP (or WASM, I guess, but that doesn�t sound as good), so he didn�t call poor people �scum� outright, even though he was thinking it. By contrast to these devils, Obama certainly looks good, although his criminality is some of the most sinister in recent American history (even Bush didn�t claim the right to murder American citizens). Who knows, maybe in 2026, someone will make a film about Obama, as he rambles into a microphone and attempts to justify his lawless wars and global robot killing sprees.
