Frost/Nixon

I was wondering how it was going to be possible to make a two hour film about a series of television interviews, especially when the interviews in question were conducted by as bland an interviewer as David Frost, one of the first celebrities to have achieved that status simply by dint of being on television. But then, the interviews were with the most controversial of recent American presidents, and were a seminal broadcast back in 1976. With America still reeling from the Watergate affair that finished off the paranoid 37th. president, the Frost interviews were the first opportunity for Nixon to put his side of the story. At the same time, Frost needed a coup to regain his recently lost US market. Developed from the stage play which also starred Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as the two protagonists, the film turned out to be remarkably gripping.

Although perhaps not quite the "electric piece of cinema" advertised on the billboards, there is no doubt that the film managed to sustain a level of tension about the outcome of the interviews that I would not have thought possible. These were more than interviews. They were a battle between two utterly different men seeking to regain their reputations - to get back their place in the sun, as Nixon puts it to Frost in one scene. The pacing and political tension of the film owed much to the gradual realisation by Frost that he was being out-manouevred by the ever wily Nixon, and that the vast sums of money he had sunk into this come-back project were looking as lost as the proverbial sheep. And Frost's own apparent lack of political conviction merely adds to his error, as his US researchers hold to an anti-Nixon passion that he simply doesn't get. As the interviews unfold , and Frost fails to get in a killer blow, the whole project looks doomed to disaster, while Nixon appears ready to triumph.

It is certainly a skill of the film-makers that they have made this potentially mundane material so gripping. The portrayals of Nixon (Langella) and Frost (Sheen) in particular were brilliant. Sheen seems to be cornering the market on superficial, insubstantial figures with broad smiles and camera ready expressions, having played Tony Blair a couple of times, and he had Frost down to a T. A man whose whole existence was focused around television exposure, regardless of quality or purpose. Langella, meanwhile, captured the complex, paranoid, brooding Nixon superbly. Never was Enoch Powell's dictum that all political careers end in failure clearer than when Langella's Nixon, having finally been bested by Frost's questions on Watergate, just looked away from the camera, his eyes full of the knowledge of his failure.

Nixon has long fascinated me, ever since I read his dramatic memoirs as a sixth former. I have often wondered why, for all his failings, I wanted to keep rooting for him. Watching the film, I realised that it was simply the traditional sense of sympathy for the underdog. For that was actually what Nixon always was, and he knew it - knew it so clearly, and with such ferocious passion, that the knowledge ultimately destroyed him.

Hillary Clinton's Non-Role

Will Hillary Clinton actually have anything to do as Secretary of State? That is the question posed in this article from The Hill. Obama has been very keen to have a 'Team of Rivals' in his administration, and Clinton must have thought she'd won a particularly important victory when appointed Secretary of State. But as the Obama Administration settles in, has she been outmanouevred? Several other key administration insider seem to have marked foreign affairs out as their own patch, including Vice-President Joe Biden, and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. Perhaps Hillary should have stayed in the Senate after all.

The Select Committee and the Bankers

How good, really, was the Select Committee in its interrogation of the four bankers yesterday? If there is a time for such committees to show their worth, then it is surely now. And yet, the consensus seems to be that, with one or two exceptions, the MPs didn't really inflict much damage on the self-abasing bankers. The Times leader here comments on the need for this committee system to be singularly beefed up by a parliament in desperate need to show that it can still do this scrutinising business. Meanwhile, Ann Treneman's sketch of a witch burning that didn't burn any witches is here.

Taking Liberties

Historical memory has the marvellous ability to turn sordid, squalid, self-interested events into glamorous icons of human endeavour. The power of historical myth is often greater than the actuality, and nowhere is this more the case than with the Magna Carta. Or, in fact, with the whole of the British Library's very worthy 'Taking Liberties' exhibition.

Our well meaning, socialist guide brought us to Magna Carta with a sort of breathless awe. Here was the start of the English liberties we take so much for granted. Some fine quotes from the charter were hung prominently above the exhibit itself, as if to reassure us that this is where it all began. And yet, really, it didn't. Magna Carta was a straightforward bit of political haggling. The barons were fed up with paying for King John's pretty disastrous wars, and not much enamoured of the king himself. Cue military strife, which the barons win, and the drawing up of a document to guarantee baronial rights against the king. Not much liberty granting there. Actually, though, the Charter attains its magnificent symbolic power thanks to the unheralded efforts of the clerks who actually drew it up (King John and the barons not being terribly literate fellows). It was they who inserted a load of odd little rights that history has since discovered and assumed to be the basis of a great struggle for liberty. The King didn't notice. He never read it.

Then there's the picture that begins the exhibition, and round which we spent so much time pondering. It shows, pretty clearly, lots of police violence. Because that's how liberty's achieved, right? Challenging, often at physical cost, the thuggish forces of the oppressive ruling power. Er, no, not entirely. There were a few struggles in Britain, but they were relatively small scale, and many liberties came as a result of hard graft in parliament. And anyway, the picture is of a dispute in Ireland, so quite how it is meant to represent the typical British struggle for freedom us a little obscure. The Irish had more grievances against the English than you could count grains of sand on the shore of Bournemouth beach.

So it's a well meaning exhibition, and shows some fascinating documents, but in perpetuating the myth that the struggle for liberty is a titanic struggle of the altruistic many against the oppressive few, it's a little wide of the mark. The struggle for liberty has usually been because of the inexorable logic of self-interest. The barons wanting a share of power. The industrial middle classes wanting the vote to go with their wealth. And women gaining the vote because of their war work, not because of the suffragette agitation. Pragmatism rather than romanticism seems to have won through after all.

And by way of light relief, the visit to the War and Medicine exhibition was suitably clinical.

Nick Robinson Live

I was obviously delighted that the BBC's political editor found time to come and address a large sixth form meeting here yesterday, and it looks as if he didn't miss any scoops while undertaking this charitable venture.

Much that he said is worth further thought - he's always been an original and stimulating political thinker and observer - but I was impressed by the enthusiasm he feels for the political world, and his belief that we are indeed in exciting times. He ranged well beyond his British politics brief in assessing a world situation that is changing both the relationships of nations and the balance of power within them. How will China react internally to these precarious times? Do we look at Israel and simply say there is no solution? Has Russia lost the bounce she had earlier under Putin now that she's feeling her vulnerability?

Nick Robinson's survey of British politics is always worthwhile, and he updates his blog regularly with insights gleaned during his daily life at the heart of the Westminster village, but he also raised the interesting question of bias in reporting. Here he is, this former young Tory activist, needing to be the face of an impartial public broadcaster - does he achieve this? While one or two questions asked about the broader issue of BBC bias, no-one challenged him on his own position. Perhaps everyone was too polite; perhaps we think he has achieved a non-partisan approach. Interestingly, as he admitted afterwards, not everyone accepts that he is non-partisan - for a former Tory, the most regular accusation that gets flinged at him on his blog is that he is a Labour stooge!

Robinson was engaging and responsive, and I was impressed not long after he left when I wandered into one of the sixth form classrooms and saw students gathered round the interactive whiteboard, eagerly watching one of his earlier reports. Excellent, I thought, having heard him speak about his job they're now getting to grips with the raw material of his reportage. What better accolade can there be for a successful speech. Until I realised, they weren't listening to the actual content - they were waiting to see the policeman cross the screen behind him, the subject of one of his opening anecdotes! Serious politics is an uphill task after all.

Balls

This is no time for a government minster to be speaking the truth. Ed Balls, one of the PM's closest acolytes, has foolishly given an insight into his real thoughts about the current economic situation. It is, he says, the most serious global recession for over 100 years. Downing Street has moved into action to explain that he didn't really mean that at all, but, as Nick Robinson points out, actually he really did. He just didn't mean to say it out loud.

Sunday Update

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith appears to have been claiming expenses worth £116,000 on a second home that is actually her main home. The Mail on Sunday, not the most obviously impartial observers, have the story. Even with reservations, however, it is hard to see how Ms. Smith can emerge with much credit from this issue.

David Cameron talks education in a Daily Telegraph interview, and says that he would like his children to be educated in the state sector. However, he remains positive about his own Eton education.

In the third of the Bourne films trilogy, CIA officer Pamela Landy turns to helping Jason Bourne, explaining that she is appalled by the CIA black operations activity that created Bourne - "this isn't what I signed up for" she says. A point Tony Blair might have been interested in taking on board, according to the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley, who claims that Blair's refusal to challenge Bush on the issue of torture is one of his greatest moral failings:
As for Tony Blair, he did underestimate how wrong it was. He was never quite appalled enough about torture to remonstrate publicly with his ally in the White House as the Bush administration betrayed the west's best values and the very causes of human rights and the rule of law that they were supposed to be fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is something about Shami Chakrabarti, the boss of Liberty, that makes me squeal with irritation and start clawing at my throat whenever I hear her speak. So says Rod Liddle, in a Sunday Times article that many politics students might be instinctively in sympathy with.

Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph writes about the scorn and ridicule being heaped on Gordon Brown - to say nothing of being upstaged by Tony Blair this week.