That was the speech that was

Having survived being stranded in Switzerland, our roving consultant Russell Deathridge finds it hard to condemn presidents past or present for buckling under the strain of office. Find out how hard...

Lesson In Nixon

On January 20th 2009 I found myself in the only part of Zurich airport that had neither TV nor internet access. So I could only imagine what Barak Obama’s inauguration speech contained. Working for a leadership development consultancy you can imagine my embarrassment. (“So, Russell, what’s your opinion of the new President’s strategic view of the global economic crisis?” - “Profound” was going to be my stock answer) Then I saw it. He fumbled the Oath of Office. What? Obama couldn’t repeat words just read out to him? Even George W. could do that! What a start.

By spooky coincidence a few days later the film Frost/Nixon opened. There he was – the famous hanging jowls, the receding hairline, the dark rings under the eyes. Oh and there was also Richard Nixon. Nixon left us more than a tawdry suffix to describe a scandal. He gave the world 'détente' and dialogue with China as well as some great hallowe’en masks. Both the film and the original interview show that his disgrace is in the end a tragic essay in self-deceit. His embarrassed squirming when trying to square the circle between 'cover up' and 'criminal cover up'; his evident discomfort at Frost’s brilliant research; his anger as a catalogue of his taped quotes are reeled off lead him to display his famous paranoia “why are you reading out just those bad sections?”

Throughout, Nixon refuses to accept his guilt and apologise, he only accepts one thing: that he “let down the country and my friends and for that I am sorry. And I will have to carry that guilt for the rest of my life”. Bizarrely I found myself moved by this grudging apology. Frost had forced the President to look into the true heart of his administration: and there he found that for all its’ soaring accomplishments the Nixon White House had achieved, quite simply, power beyond its integrity. The actual 1977 interview may not have been an incendiary confrontation in real life, but the film brilliantly shades the facts to bring out a dark truth.

Perhaps Obama’s fumbled swearing in will have a salutary effect on him. If the new President ever discovers the truism that 'power corrupts' his mind may turn to that moment last month when he tripped on the words “to execute faithfully the office of president of the United States and to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution”. After all Nixon’s swearing went smoothly.