Pat Dollard | Young Americans

BTW, Ronnie … Your daughter’s acting … not-so-much, yeah.

Fox’s Wallace defends Bush at screening

Takes on Hollywood filmmaker

by Jon Ward - (WaTimes)

Fox News journalist Chris Wallace on Monday evening defended President Bush against criticism by Hollywood filmmaker Ron Howard that the president has abused his office in a way similar to President Richard Nixon.

“Richard Nixon’s crimes were committed purely in the interest of his own political gain,” Mr. Wallace told Mr. Howard before an audience of a few hundred after viewing the filmmakers new film “Frost/Nixon,” which is about the only U.S. president to resign from office.

“I think to compare what Nixon did, and the abuses of power for pure political self preservation, to George W. Bush trying to protect this country — even if you disagree with rendition or waterboarding — it seems to me is both a gross misreading of history both then and now,” Mr. Wallace said.

Mr. Wallace was a member of the audience at a special preview screening of “Frost/Nixon,” which depicts the process that led to the disgraced presidents confession of failure. The screening was held at the National Geographic building in Washington. The movie opens nationwide Friday.

After the screening, Mr. Howard took the stage, along with writer Peter Morgan, James Reston Jr., one of the researchers who helped interviewer David Frost, and historian Robert Dallek.

Mr. Howard was the first to comment about the films connection to Mr. Bush, saying that he had told friends in 1977 that an abuse of power similar to Nixon’s would “never happen again.”

“So that led to some frustrations that I’ve experienced over the last few years,” said Mr. Howard, an Oscar-winning director.

Mr. Dallek followed Mr. Howard’s comments.

“It’s just as Ron says. We’ve been, back in the past eight years, through this anguish about an imperial presidency,” he said. “This has, I think, in a sense, made this film and the play, so timely, and why it’s really commanding so much attention.”

A few moments later, Mr. Reston, who is one of the characters portrayed in the film, said the film had been “driven by the metaphor of George W. Bush.”

Bush = Nixon? Not So Fast, Says FNC’s Chris Wallace

(FOX FORUM)

Last night’s special screening of new movie “Frost/Nixon” in Washington, D.C. was an early holiday gift to Beltway liberals, delivering glad tidings of anti-Nixonian feelgood vibes to the permanent Washington establishment, which has felt shut out of power for so long, during the dark night of Gingrich-DeLay-Bush these past 15 years, before the Obama dawn.

But even during this happy masque of lefty triumphalism, FOX News’ Chris Wallace threw a fair-and-balanced apple of discord into the middle of the festivities. Wallace had the nerve to defend George W. Bush from the ongoing liberal effort to Nixonize the 43rd President.

After the film’s screening, at the National Geographic Society headquarters in downtown Washington, director Ron Howard, playwright/screenwriter Peter Morgan, and Nixon-hater James Reston Jr. (son of the legendary New York Times columnist) appeared onstage for a question-and-answer session with the audience. The discussion was moderated by Robert Dallek, the retired Boston University professor and well-known historian.

Wallace had the nerve to defend George W. Bush from the ongoing liberal effort to Nixonize the 43rd President.

Howard was, well, Hollywood-ish, talking about the making of the film and the screen-testing of various alternate endings. And Morgan was arty and somewhat abstract, seemingly more hostile to Frost—who conducted the 1977 “checkbook journalism” interviews with the disgraced 37th president that are the heart of the film—than to Nixon. But Reston, portrayed in the film as a young Nixon-hating researcher for Frost, was relentlessly vehement, using every occasion he could to steer the discussion back to Nixon’s “criminality” and the need to confront it. Again. And again. And again.

Then Reston went further, declaring that the film was “a metaphor for George W. Bush,” a theme that Howard and Dallek, at least, seemed comfortable with. That was fine for the liberal multitudes in the audience, including former CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, now in his ninth decade, who proudly recollected for the audience that he was “number fourteen on Nixon’s enemies list,” and former Watergate Committee counsel Richard Ben-Veniste, who resurfaced in 2004 as one of the 9/11 Commissioners.

But then “FOX News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, braving the liberal wind, asked a question, which was actually more of an accusation. “To compare George W. Bush to Richard Nixon is to trivialize Nixon’s crimes and is a disservice to Bush,” Wallace said. Recalling that 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, and noting that there hadn’t been any attacks on U.S. soil since, Wallace suggested that something had been done right. That’s why, he said, “we are all sitting here tonight so comfortably”—and not afraid of another terrorist attack. Moreover, Wallace said, “Richard Nixon’s crimes were committed solely for his own political gain, whereas George W. Bush was trying to protect the American people.” To suggest otherwise, Wallace insisted, “was a grave misrepresentation of history, then and now.” And, amazingly, Wallace received a smattering of applause.

Seemingly not wanting to get into a fight with the TV newsman, Dallek answered that we knew full well of Nixon’s criminality because of the Watergate tapes, but that no similar documentary record existed yet for Bush. Only when such information comes out, Dallek suggested, would the full horror of Bush’s presidency become visible. Which, of course, proved Wallace’s point: It was not fair to equate proven facts about Nixon with mere allegations about Bush.

“You make suppositions on no facts whatsoever,” Wallace concluded.

“Do you read The New York Times?” Dallek countered. That might not have been the strongest comeback ever, but it worked just fine with this audience. And with that, the Q & A session resumed its liberal course for the rest of the evening.