At my first interview with Richard Nixon, in his New York office in the summer of 1985, I set my tape recorder on the table beside his armchair. He stared at the machine. "That's one of those new tape recorders," he said admiringly. "They're so much better than the old tape recorders."
"Oh yes, Mr. President. These new tape recorders don't skip a minute." I did not say that. I did not even think it, caught so thoroughly off guard in the fearful comedy of his presence.
Yet it occurred to me, driving toward what was now my third interview with Nixon, at his home in Saddle River, N.J. (I had been there once before at a dinner last spring), that in fact I had always thought of Nixon as a comic character, a dark and serious American comic character, like someone out of Twain. Comic in the Checkers speech. Comic in the "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" farewell following his defeat in the California gubernatorial election in 1962. In the clownish 5 o'clock shadow of the first Nixon-Kennedy television debate. In the "I am not a crook" protest. Lighting fires in the White House fireplace in the middle of summer. Kneeling with Henry Kissinger in prayer. Phone calls to Woody Hayes. Bebe Rebozo. Robert Abplanalp. Comic names, madcap circumstances. The man who exalted the "Enemies List," vowing not to hate his haters, waving bravely from the chopper door, then flying back to California toward a town with a name that sounds like clemency.
But see: the Checkers speech effected not Nixon's disgrace but his political rescue; and we did have Nixon to kick around some more; and if one reviews the tapes, it is easy to conclude that he actually won the TV debate with Jack Kennedy; and he was a crook. So there. With Nixon, every circumstance eventually turns out to be funnier than he is. The nation he has trod these 75 years, the framework for his antics, is itself a dark and serious comedy, simultaneously rejecting and accepting everything in its midst; a riot, a scream. Sometimes (rarely) Nixon laughs aloud. The gunshot laugh, the "Ha!" It is what Beckett designated as the risus purus: the laugh laughing at itself in the abysmal farce, in which every part is deadly ridiculous, every line as funny as a crutch.
"Why the hell did we bug the National Committee? They never know anything. If you're going to bug anybody, you bug the McGovern headquarters!" ((Drummer does a rimshot.))
"Jackson will have his way with the platform, and the candidate will ignore the platform. That's the way it happens." ((Rimshot.))
"The media go on about the 'undecided voter.' Ha! Undecided voter. That's bullshit. Believe me, people decide about politics early on. You take the average guy. You know? Sipping beer and eating his pretzels. He's worrying about who he should vote for? While I'm on it, there's another myth in politics: that the American people, in their wisdom, like to divide power. That's why they vote for Republicans for President and Democrats for Congress. Because they want a balance of power. You think the average guy says, 'Gee! I'm afraid of that one, so I'm going to restrain him'? Ha! That's a political scientist talking. Know what I mean?" ((Double rimshot.))