At a screening of the film Frost/Nixon, Fox News Channel‘s Chris Wallace defends George W. Bush against the assertion—which doesn’t seem to have been made by anyone present—that Bush’s crimes were worse than Richard Nixon’s (Salon, 12/2/08):
It trivializes Nixon’s crimes and completely misrepresents what George W. Bush did. Whatever George W. Bush did was after the savage attack of 9/11, in which 3,000 Americans were killed, it was done in service of trying to protect this country. I’m not saying that you have to agree with everything he did, but it was all done in the service of trying to protect this country and keep us safe. And the fact is that we sit here so comfortably, and the country has not been attacked again since 9/11.
Of course, Nixon would have argued that everything he did was in the service of trying to protect America from enemies. (In fact, if I remember correctly, he does make this argument in the theatrical version of Frost/Nixon, which draws heavily from transcripts of actual interviews.) The enemies the U.S. faced then were much better armed than the ones it faces now—and they never attacked us, so, hey, Watergate must have worked!
