TV REVIEWS : PBS Offers a Compelling Look at ‘Nixon’

Richard Nixon is arguably the most fascinating, charismatic and resilient political figure in contemporary history. He remains a work in progress, an unsolved mystery, even as his ambivalent life and legacy continue to undergo constant scrutiny.

Tonight it’s PBS that operates the microscope in a 3-hour biography airing under “The American Experience” banner. Presented at 8 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15, “Nixon” follows its subject from his formative years as a youth in Yorba Linda across the peaks and valleys of his personal and professional lives, the lowest of them being his resignation as President on Aug. 9, 1974 to avoid impeachment.

This is an unauthorized biography, so to speak, with neither Nixon nor any of his family consenting to take part.

Each of tonight’s hours is separately produced and directed (by David Espar, Elizabeth Deane and Marilyn Mellowes). That each is also totally absorbing--despite offering essentially nothing new--testifies not only to the filmmakers’ abilities but also to Nixon’s capacity to capture and hold our attention at any time in any setting.

Almost misleadingly, the program ends with Nixon leaving the White House following his incredible farewell speech to his staff in which, seemingly oblivious to the camera, he spoke about himself and his parents in an intimate way that was at once heart-rending and full of revealing self pity.

He did not merely chopper away into the sunset, however. As he had after lesser humiliations, Nixon was to arise once more even from this ashen holocaust, in subsequent years using books and selected public appearances to make his comeback as a sort of armchair elder statesman among conservatives.

Of course, Vietnam and Watergate are covered here, with Erlichman, Colson, Dean and others having their say about the crime--and Nixon’s clear obstruction of justice--that brought down this President. Political fiction was never weirder.

It’s the pre-1968 Nixon that’s most interesting, though. You look into the eyes of the boyhood Nixon, photographed with his violin, and wonder what those eyes see, if the apparent inner conflicts that were to help shape his later years were already concealed enemies battling in his mind. You hear of his devotion to his family, his persistance and success in school against the odds, his affection for his men as a Navy officer in World War II, and you feel only admiration.

But then comes the inexplicable gap, not the infamous 18-minute one, the gap in personalities separating this essentially likable young man from the older, harder man who was to follow, the self-serving, corner-cutting, winning-is-all-that-matters politician who was to become affixed in many minds as a squinty, jowly, dark-bearded stereotype.

This is not close to being the definitive study of Richard Nixon, but it’s a captivating one because the man himself is so captivating. Love him or leave him.