Henry Higgins: Video: BBC's Who Was Richard Nixon

Source:The New Democrat 

With all due respect to BBC, I don’t think you can explain who was Richard Nixon in under an hour. To explain someone as the narrator in this film said is one of if not the most fascinating American politicians whose ever lived, you probably need a mini-series. A three or four-hour film. If you try to cover Nixon and just focus on Watergate or the criminal conspiracies inside of the Nixon White House, or the checkers speech, the House Un-American Activities Committee, you’ll only get part of his life story and not even half of that. And to cover those things alone, you would probably need three hours to do that.

And for the admirers of Dick Nixon and people from the outside looking in who are simply interested in learning about the man, focusing on his rags to riches story and being born in the valley and rising to the top of the mountain, to paraphrase President Nixon, again you would need probably weeks of reading and watching films about the man. Nixon’s public service career goes from World War II in the early 1940s serving in that war, all the way up to leaving the White House in 1974. With Congress, the Vice Presidency, his role of the GOP comeback of 1966 and 68 and even winning the Presidency in 1968 in between.

You could read series of books and watch series of documentaries about the man’s foreign policy accomplishments including ending the Vietnam War alone. Or his push to move America off of foreign oil with a national energy policy in 1973. His push to reform Welfare in 1969 that became Welfare to Work in 1996. His push to reform American health care and health insurance in 1974, that became the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even if you watch this entire film about Dick Nixon, again you may get part of his story, but ending it with so much more to learn about the man.