You might think I would love last night's show, with its focus on Richard Nixon. I did enjoy it, though I did take issue with some pretty blatant errors. So I decided to sit down and write a diary about it, because they seem to be errors that many people make. Colbert also omitted some facts about Nixon, which I will discuss as well. Patrick Buchanan made some pretty obvious historical errors, such as the one where he said Nixon had
[the] greatest landslide in American political history.
However,
No candidate for president since has equaled or surpassed [Lyndon] Johnson's percentage of the popular vote, and only Richard Nixon in 1972 has won by a greater popular vote margin.
Source:
1964 election. I guess I shouldn't be surprised Buchanan would glorify Nixon, but I DO wish Colbert had corrected him. I did enjoy the segment with John Dean. I've actually been reading his book
The Nixon Defense, and although I like it, I have to take breaks because it gets to be overwhelming at times, for obvious reasons. I do think Colbert did a great service informing his younger audience about someone they may not be familiar with (Richard Nixon), as well as an important period of American history (Watergate). Follow me below the orange squiggly thing to read more about ol' Tricky Dick.
I can't seem to find a transcript for last night's show, so I'm going by memory. I did indeed watch it again tonight so that I could be more specific.
First, Nixon's re-election committee was actually called C.R.P., not C.R.E.E.P. People used the latter to mock it, but C.R.P is its proper name. Source: C.R.P Wikipedia, source: C.R.P 1972. I understand perfectly why people call it C.R.E.E.P, but that is not accurate. Colbert did not address this, and I wish he had. I do commend Colbert for not mentioning the (in)famous "I am not a crook" speech, which is almost always quoted out of context. It is actually part of a longer speech, which I never even knew until recently.
Also, Colbert mentioned Woodward and Bernstein, who, although certainly important to the Watergate story, are not as important as people say. Source: Media Myth and Nixon, source: Watergate Myth. I've actually read Getting It Wrong and found it extremely informative. (It also disproved LBJ's famous quote: "If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost middle America." The author makes a convincing case that not only did LBJ not say this, he didn't even watch the show where Cronkite talked about Vietnam! But I digress.)
John Dean mentions Nixon wanting to break into the Brookings Institute, but he gets the reasoning wrong. It had nothing to do with the Pentagon Papers, but rather related to LBJ's so called X-File, discussing the sabotaged 1968 peace talks. Source: LBJ's X-File on Nixon's Treason. Nixon wanted this file for obvious reasons, but, as the link points out, LBJ made sure it was taken when he left office. (Whether or not this was legal is another issue, though the article makes me glad it was indeed taken, despite the issue of legality.)
I did like that Colbert mentioned the E.P.A, one of the few things I like about Nixon, though I was surprised that he did not mention Nixon's proposed universal healthcare law, or that Ted Kennedy later regretted not passing said law. (It is interesting to wonder how different our country would be if the law had indeed passed. Certainly we would not be having the Obamacare/A.C.A debates, or the 50 or so attempted repeal votes, which is strange to think about.)
Buchanan said that Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, which, while technically true, omits that it probably would have ended in 1968 if Nixon's people hadn't sabotaged LBJ's peace talks, as mentioned above. And of course Buchanan completely left out Nixon expanding the war into Cambodia, which Colbert did mention, albeit very briefly. With the 1960 debates, there was no mention that people who listened to the debate on the radio felt Nixon had won, which I think is quite interesting.
Although Colbert did refer to Nixon losing the 1962 California race, he didn't say what Nixon was running for (governor), or mention one of my favorite Nixon quotes: "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." Not only is it a great bitter speech, even better, he was apparently drunk when he gave the speech!
There was also no mention of Nixon's post-Watergate legacy, but since this show only focused on 1974, I guess that is quite understandable. I did love the tape of Richard Nixon discussing panda sex. Hilarious!
Despite all my issues with Stephen Colbert's Nixon show, I did enjoy it, and am glad he spent a whole show discussing the always complicated Richard M. Nixon.