Analysis of Richard Nixon's Portrayal in Frost's Film

The success of a story depends a lot on the traits of the characters that the author chooses. Even in real-life situations, interests, attractions, desires, and ambitions will determine a person's decisions. These items that define character are, in most cases, not just things one is born with, some come with childhood experiences and interactions that shape a person's perception of life. Most of the time, one is not sure about the success of their course and has to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the right path to take. This process or dilemma at times remains even after making or settling for a choice, like in marriage, profession, business, and religion, just to mention a few. An evaluation of Frost/Nixon and Nixon implies that the decisions we make, to an extent, reflect our innermost character, and this can significantly affect our lives and the lives of those around us. It also shows the effects of our pasts on our future.

The film Nixon brings out the battles from within; the internal fights that one might have, and the danger it poses on the host when third parties are involved in this battle. Richard Nixon has an inward struggle in that he desires to walk in perfection. He does all he can to achieve this, but the different aspects of fulfilment do not seem to want to work together. At one point in time, he desires not to lose the presidency of the United States of America and is consequently involved in a scandal, but then this sabotages the other side of perfection. Having achieved the former, he has to hide the latter, a responsibility he does not manage to carry out successfully. Frost/Nixon depicts the consequences side of life. Nixon sees Frost as an opportunity to defend his image before the Americans, therefore, enabling him to escape the consequences of his previous actions. Fate, although, gives him no chance as it dawns on him that Frost is unexpectedly prepared to take him down. When a drunken Nixon threatens Frost in a phone call that either of their lives will be improved or ruined by the final interview, Frost becomes much more sterile, causing Nixon to admit that some of his acts are illegal.

The two films, Nixon and Frost/Nixon, revolve around the life of the 37th president of the United States of America, Mr Richard Nixon. The first one, Nixon, focuses on his dive into his political career in his early stages of life, his sense of paranoia, his desire for excellence, and how he fights to join these two sides of life. The second film brings Mr Frost into play. David Frost, a talk show host, seeks to become an accomplished journalist and hopes that having an interview with the resigned President would give him the much-needed push. David Frost is an interviewer who sees Nixon as a person who can help him get back to America. Nixon, on his side, believes that the meeting will provide him with a rare chance to defend his actions before the people of America, and recover his image. In short, Frost the financially strapped entertainer sought to become Frost the accomplished journalist, while Nixon, the disgraced public official sought to become Nixon, the elder statesman. Both of them attempt to win, but in a phone call at night to Frost's hotel room, they come to an agreement that, although their goals are different, the ticket is the same, and both of them cannot succeed at the same time; one has to lose. The film's most haunting sequence is Peter Morgan's invention, a phone conversation between Frost and Nixon in which the drunken ex-president suggests they're both motivated by a sense of being patronized, lower-middle-class outsider.

Nixon and Frost/Nixon is bad history; one continued in another. President Nixon is forced into the life he is living, just because of internal desires, and childhood memories. It is, however, sad that nobody can understand his side of the story as everybody has mistaken him for keen and able, even though he is shy. The character of the President, as depicted in both films, is a man who knows what perfection is as he has seen it in other men, and he also struggles to achieve it. Fear of failure is certainly one explanation that the film posits, perhaps even a fear of an establishment backlash. The President imagines that there are perfect people who have it quite easy to walk in that excellence, and for him, he has to fight hard for it. In his battle to achieve this, he finds himself in the Watergate scandal, and the only way out is hiding it. The decision, however, appears to have been a wrong one to go by as it remained to haunt him throughout his stay in the white house. Furthermore, when it becomes known to the public, they all lose their trust in him, and according to David Frost in Frost/Nixon, what they wanted to hear most was confession and an apology. If Nixon would not have hidden anything from the face of the Americans, and if he would have come out clean, at least early enough, and without much treasure, his list of agonies would not have been as long.

Nixon suffered more from an inward prosecution than an external one if there existed any. It is made worse by the fact that the character he had was brought in by his past, and replaying it in his mind gave him the self-affliction he suffered. 'Nixon' shows the President's awkward, unhappy early years, as two brothers die, and his strict Quaker parents fill him with a sense of purpose and inadequacy. 'When you quit struggling, they've beaten you,' his father says. And his mother (Mary Steenburgen), speaking in the Quaker tradition of thees and thous, seems always to hold him to a higher standard than he can hope to reach. This is the man created in Nixon that he desired to march up, but he only could not. This made him feel less of himself, and hard on those he felt had it more natural. It also made him consider certain people as sainted, humbling himself before them. The human condition consumed Nixon, who is more reproachful and it made him humble in the presence of those he felt were saints.Those he regarded holy included his mother Hannah and wife, Pat, but with an irresistible urge to associate himself with those less morally centred, more daring, closer to the boundaries of right and wrong, a place he found all too tempting to visit. His desire to be with the less morally centred was caused by his inability to rise to the image created by his morally centred mother that brought up the inferiority he was trying to fight.

Whereas it is essential to seek perfection and serve with utmost excellence, one must realize the need to know how to hold each office. Richard Nixon carried the office of the President of the United States of America as his personal life and made decisions as if they only mattered to him alone. He sought first to accomplish his desires and place his American voters second, little did he know what it would cost him. Frost, on the other hand, knew how to merge personal desires and those of the people he stood for. He knew what they wanted, and identified with them, making it easy for him to be of delight to the multitudes. Our actions and decisions should, therefore, be guided by this philosophy, that there is a time in life that we are alone and have only ourselves to consider, but as time goes by, people are added to our group, and it becomes our duty to ensure we consider them in our actions and decisions.