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Kindred Spirits

By Rick Horowitz

David Frost: So what in a sense you're saying is that there are certain situations...where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

Richard Nixon: Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition.

Nixon: Exactly.

In the place where they go after here, Richard Nixon is up before sunrise. No problem -- he's never been much for sunlight anyway. He's already finished his morning walk; there's nothing like a daily unconstitutional to get the creaky parts moving again.

The shower is bracing, and as he turns the water off and reaches for his towel, he hears voices from the next room. Fox News. Free cable for eternity, he reminds himself -- it may be the best thing about the place.

The newsman drones on, as Nixon busies himself choosing among a dozen perfectly identical blue suits, a hundred perfectly identical white shirts. He listens with only half an ear. But even with only half an ear, he notices the newsman's voice interrupted frequently by another voice -- this one edged with a sharp Texas twang.

"Must be the Bush kid again," Nixon murmurs. "He's everywhere lately."

Nixon's hearing is as sharp as ever -- it is indeed "the Bush kid," and he certainly has been everywhere lately. This time, he's standing at a lectern in the East Room, fielding questions from reporters. Before that, he was sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, addressing the nation. And before that, he was standing in the Roosevelt Room, and before that --

Overexposure, Nixon thinks to himself. A president has to be careful of overexposure. On the other hand, he concedes, the kid's poll numbers are up. (Nixon still reads the polls.) It might be just a bump, but at least for the moment, it seems to be working. Maybe the rules are different in a 24/7 world. Nixon makes a note; it could be worth a chapter in his next book.

He's listening more closely now, and there's something about the kid's tone that sounds strangely familiar. They're baiting him -- that's what they're doing. Those press jackals are baiting him with questions about domestic spying. Spying on Americans without even checking with the special court set up precisely to handle this kind of thing.

But it's not just the tone of the questions that attracts Nixon's attention. It's the tone of the answers, too.

The kid is standing his ground. He sounds frustrated, even angry at times, but he's standing his ground. Not only isn't he apologizing for spying on Americans -- he's saying flat-out that he's going to keep doing it! He keeps talking about how it's wartime, and how he's responsible for protecting the country in wartime, and how the Constitution gives him all the authority he needs to do whatever he thinks is necessary to protect the country, and anyway, if he needs even more authority, Congress gave it to him back in 2001 (whether they realized it or not) when they authorized him to take military action against the people behind the September 11 attacks.

So there.

The kid is no foreign-affairs expert, Nixon thinks to himself -- but then, Nixon left them all in the dust when it came to knowing his way around a globe. The kid keeps repeating the same lines over and over again. It's a script (Nixon can see that, anyone can see that), but at least he's sticking to it. And every now and again, he launches a zinger -- when he demands, for instance, that senators who voted for the Patriot Act in 2001 and are now pushing for certain changes explain why they think the law is "no longer necessary."

That's nearly as good as those zingers from the night before, the one about how "to retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor," and especially the one about how "defeatism may have its partisan uses."

Talk about sticking the knife in! Talk about questioning the critics' patriotism without even mentioning their names! If Nixon had been wearing a hat, he'd have had to tip it to the Bush kid, and to whoever was writing his lines. Why, for cleverness, for guile, for making clear that the normal rules don't apply to you, it's positively --

He struggles in vain to find a better word.

It's positively Nixonian.

Posted 12/20/05. Click to "Rick's" for award-winning commentary -- and tell the neighbors!

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist, TV commentator, writing coach and public speaker.

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