Thursday, December 04, 2008
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LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM “FROST/NIXON”
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Posted by:
Michael Medved at
11:50 AM
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The riveting new film “Frost/Nixon” presents a surprisingly sympathetic and richly relevant portrait of the 37th President of the United States. In his eminently Oscar-worthy performance, Frank Langella portrays Richard Nixon as smart, commanding, vulnerable and, above all, fiercely formidable. In a series of brilliantly re-staged, historic TV interviews with British talk show host David Frost, the resigned former President makes the ultimately heart-breaking admission that he “let down” the American people. In providing context for this searing moment, the movie makes one crucial omission: not emphasizing the landslide dimensions of Nixon’s re-election victory just five years before the interviews, when the Republican Nixon carried 49 of 50 states. This background connects to the most important message of the film for President-elect Obama and for us: popularity, image and political skill are fleeting, but character and its impact are permanent
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Nixon came to the realization that he had let down the American people. George W. Bush has much more severely let down the American people, but he hasn't come to this realization yet. George W. Bush has wrecked the economy, left tens of thousands soldiers severely injured in useless wars, and has gotten caught trying to subvert the entire democratic system of government in the United states by politicizing the Justice Department. Nixon left the country in relatively good shape; Bush may have destroyed us. |
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but thanks for playin'........
The Democrats wrecked this economy with their decades-old support of CRA 1977 and all those "politically correct" sub-prime mortgages.......
They even went public saying "everything's okay at Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac".......
this point is beyond dispute as there is videotape of Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and Barney Frank saying this and accusing the Republicans of racism and "stirring up much ado about nothing"......
Barney Frank and Chrios Dodd should go to jail since, not only did they Chair the House and Senate committees that were tasked with the oversight of the financial markets......
BUT Chris Dodd accepted a "sweetheart" mortgage from Countrywide and Barney Frank had a gay male lover at Fannie Mae........
Quit getting your "facts" from MSNBC and Daily Kos.... |
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Well the truth is closer to the middle of the two previous posts. Nixon did not leave this country in all that great a shape -remember the original Oil Crisis? And he also got a few years between himself and the presidency before he copped to any wrong-doing. If Bush can man-up enough to say that he made specific mistakes in the next four years I'll be quite pleasantly surprised. I'm not even going to get into the sweetheart deals that were an integral, policy driving element of the Bush Administration, but there's no doubt that both Dems and Republicans got it wrong big time a whole lot in the past 8 years. But I digress...
If you want to take an informed, intelligent position about Nixon in the context of the new Ron Howard film, you really have to watch "Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews" which is the actual televised interview from 1977.
Don't rely on an author to filter the facts when the real thing is available to you. |
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Radio Equalizier is attacking you Michael, saying you are a big loser and liberal. As a long time listener of your radio show, I cannot recall you ever attacking Rush Limbaugh (you have always defended and thanked him, even during Rush's dark days when the Florida prosecutors were trying to make him public enemy number one).
http://radioequalizer.blogspot.com/2008/12/host-tries-to-po ur-cold-water-on-obama.html
Brian Maloney paints you as a big loser in talk radio, but you do have four million weekly listers last time I checked. That is pretty good actually.
What give? I am usually a big fan of Brian Maloney (his expose of the Air America scandal was fabulous stuff and top notch work). |
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Then I'd say our second black president will be very, very temporary, as he appears to have no character at all--other than a teleprompter. |
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