"They gave me so much power, why are they surprised I used it?"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Some Nixonian Nostalgia: That Last Night With Henry
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Published: October 5, 2006


(Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Gerry Bamman, left, and Steve Mellor in “Nixon’s Nixon.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong,” the president of the United States is saying peevishly, his mouth puckering into a lemon-sucking moue. “They gave me so much power, why are they surprised I used it?”

Care to guess the name of the president in question, who is currently being depicted spewing self-justification from the stage of the Lucille Lortel Theater?

You might be inclined to choose the White House’s current occupant. After all, according to some analysts, George W. Bush has presided over the biggest power grab by the executive branch in American history. And certainly he’s a favorite punching bag of Off and Off Off Broadway theater these days.

But I’m afraid you’d be wrong. The cranky figure braying excuses for his role in the crisis enveloping his country is actually Richard M. Nixon, as portrayed with captivating relish by Gerry Bamman in the MCC Theater revival of Russell Lees’s play “Nixon’s Nixon.”...The secretary of state, Henry A. Kissinger, has joined his boss for a late-night colloquy. As the liquor flows, so do regrets and recriminations, moist-eyed recollections of triumphs and bitter reveries on the power and glory that have slipped through their fingers too soon....

***

This vision of the country’s leaders retreating happily into a fantasy world of their own invention may strike some in the audience as having a certain grimly funny currency at the moment. The squabbling and finger pointing between politicians bent on burnishing their own images, even as they casually total the numbers of civilians and soldiers who have died on their watch, might also strike an eerily contemporary note (especially since Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial,” suggests that Kissinger continues to play an influential role in United States foreign policy)....

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/theater/reviews/05nixo.html