Frost/Nixon and Bush

'Tis the season for another appropriate-time-of-the-year Roland Hansen Commentary.

It is wintertime in the northern hemisphere. It is also the time of year right now to hear the popular song Frosty the Snowman. It is also the season in which it is not uncommon to see a whole lot of frost in the colder regions. To top it all off, there is now a popular movie being shown in a theater near you about Frost - David Frost, that is.

You’ve most likely heard of the Broadway play based on a real-life political event that has been made into a Hollywood movie. It’s about a reporter by the name of David Frost and the events surrounding his famous interviews with a lying, deceiving, disgraceful President. No, the President in this story is not George W. Bush. The President portrayed in this theatrical production is none other than Richard Milhous Nixon.

There are a couple unique factors that set Nixon apart from other Presidents of the United States of America. One is the fact that Nixon is the only President who had served as a vice president and then later became president, but did not succeed the president under whom he had served. The second is the fact that Richard Nixon, a.k.a. Dick Nixon, a.k.a. Tricky Dick, was the only president of the United States ever to resign from the highest elective office of the land. He did the country this favor when he left office on August 9, 1974 rather than face impeachment after a committee of the United States House of Representatives had voted to issue several articles of impeachment for consideration by the full legislative chamber. If you don’t know the story behind this historic event, I’ll give you the two-cent version. Congress began to consider impeachment when it was discovered that Nixon had lied to the country when he said he knew nothing of the Watergate scandal. That was a scandal that involved a break-in at the National Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel along with other illegal activities by employees of Nixon's 1972 re-election committee and by staff members of his Presidential Executive Office.

Incidentally, it was during Richard Nixon’s presidency that the elected Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned from office due to corruption charges. His replacement by Presidential appointment and congressional confirmation was Gerald Rudolph Ford, a.k.a. Jerry Ford, who ascended to the Presidency upon Nixon’s resignation. Jerry Ford has the distinction of having served as President without ever being elected nationwide.

Let me see, now. Nixon was going to be impeached in his second term basically for lying. Approximately some 25 years later, another President of the United States of America by the name of William Jefferson Clinton, a.k.a. Bill Clinton, was impeached during his second term basically for lying about an extramarital sexual situation.

Flash forward, I wish to bring to your attention a couple interesting facts about the current out-going President of the United States, George Walker Bush. One fact is that the Electoral College elected George W. Bush after he lost the popular election vote in 2000. He is the fourth person ever to have been elected President without having received a majority vote of the American people. The other three were John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in 1888. The election of George W. Bush was also only the second time in the history of the United States that the son of a former president was elected president. George Herbert Walker Bush, father of George W. Bush, also served as president. It had been approximately 200 years since the only other father and son Presidents, those two being John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

It is George W. Bush who lied to the American people and to Congress drawing the United States into an undeclared war in Iraq costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Under George W. Bush, there is another Dick of whom there have been many allegations of corruption. That Dick is none other than a guy by the name of Richard Bruce Cheney, who has been serving as Vice President to George W. Bush. If that isn’t the frosting on the cake!!! It is my opinion that the Bush-Cheney administration will go down as the worst performing and most corrupt Presidency in United States history.

I find it absolutely amazing that two Presidents in recent history, Dick Nixon and Bill Clinton, have faced removal from the Office of President by the United States Congress while another lying, deceiving, disgraceful President by the name of George W. Bush gets away scott-free. That just frosts me!!!