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Impeaching Nixon with his own words

Comedian Harry Shearer brings his faithful, and often hilarious, adaptation of Richard Nixon's Oval Office tapes to YouTube.

Henry Goodman as Henry Kissinger (with folder) and Harry Shearer as President Nixon. Photo: Justin Downing
Henry Goodman as Henry Kissinger (with folder) and Harry Shearer as President Nixon. Photo: Justin DowningRead more© Justin Downing

INADVERTENTLY just in time for Halloween, multimedia funnyman Harry Shearer is ringing America's doorbell with what he calls the "strangest, creepiest, funniest, spookiest" character he's ever played.

Charles Montgomery Burns, the millionaire-boss-from-hell who Shearer has voiced on Fox's "The Simpsons" for the last 24 years?

Hardly.

Instead, the 70-year-old Shearer's six-part "Nixon's the One" series - which debuted for a U.S. audience this week on YouTube - tackles what the comedian and actor agreed is "the Great Dark Whale" of his baby-boomer generation: 37th president Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace 40 years ago.

On Monday, Shearer hits Philadelphia's World Cafe Live for a special, interactive show that mixes clips of the series - which aired earlier this year in the United Kingdom - with tales of his half-century fascination with Nixon and a question-and-answer session.

In re-creating Nixon right down to the massive (prosthetic) nose, Shearer feels that he's one-upped Oliver Stone and all the other cinematic recreators of the star-crossed ex-president with the strangest tale of all: the truth.

"Nixon's the One" is a faithful, word-for-word re-enactment of some of Nixon's most bizarre and unconsciously hilarious conversations in the Oval Office, made possible by hundreds of hours of then-secret tape recordings.

The White House tapes were Nixon's political undoing in 1974, but for Shearer - who listened with his collaborator, the noted historian Stanley Kutler, to untold hours of the recordings, many of which have never been transcribed - they were the Rosetta Stone that allowed him to play Nixon not as a cartoon villain but as a more nuanced, if pathetic, character.

"He just didn't have the 'let-it-go' gene," said Shearer in a telephone interview, describing Nixon's toxic stew of social and class resentments. One example: a taped conversation with his foreign-policy chief Henry Kissinger in which the president voiced his rage over predecessor John F. Kennedy never inviting him to a White House social event.

"Nobody says to him, 'You know, sir - he's in the ground and you've won, you're president,' " Shearer said.

Shearer's uncanny re-creation of Nixon comes at a moment when Americans may be rethinking why presidents succeed, and why they so frequently fail.

Shearer, a full-throated progressive who frequently dissects politics on public radio's "Le Show" and elsewhere, doesn't disguise his disappointment with President Obama for failing to follow through on his liberal promises. He said that one of the more surprising things about Nixon is that his domestic policies were to the left of Obama - and just about every other modern U.S. politician.

He noted that late in his presidency, Nixon "gave a speech were he proposed a guaranteed annual income for all Americans - how many wild horses would it take for Obama to propose something like that?"

In bringing the interactive show to Philadelphia, Shearer is rewarding a city where the longtime Sunday broadcasts of "Le Show" on WHYY (recently pushed back to 11 p.m.) have boosted his popularity beyond his global recognition for a plethora of voices in "The Simpsons" and for playing bassist Derek Smalls in the mockumentary classic, "This Is Spinal Tap."

The Southern California native admits he's a fan of Philadelphia -"I'm fond of cities that have some sense of their history attached to them"- but then so was Nixon, thanks to the president's favorite mayor, Frank Rizzo.

"Nixon was always attracted to the tough guys - he always talked about the manly virtues of being hard and he always accused his opponents of being soft," Shearer said, even though ironically he sees in Nixon a certain softness - of fluttering hand gestures, pursed lips and batted eyelashes. It's just one more contradiction in a political giant who still fascinates in 2014, and probably will for years to come.

Blog: ph.ly/Attytood.com