Nixon: Perfectly Clear. How Richard M. Nixon, in Death, in Love, Saved the Universe, and Himself. Maybe.

Based on forty years of research and thought about the life and character of Richard M. Nixon, not once in this play will the reader find the words “Tricky Dick,” even if he did deserve that label. Indeed, his dirty tricks could fill a book. Come to think of it….

To my thinking, the average American would be as likely to join a Manson family as commit the numerous crimes done by Nixon or under his watch. Old Nick, the Devil’s assistant in the play, elucidates many of these crimes against humanity, of a scale (I would hope) unimaginable to us average folk. What we can grasp, what even a little child can instinctively get, are the smaller crimes against the human heart: the acts of cruelty and the impact of fear and lies.

The play attempts to follow the human scent into those hidden, wounded places of the Nixonian heart and offer the healing of the Cosmic Orgone. Perhaps when we truly understand that hatred and fear are no less powerful a bond as love, perhaps then….

Nixon’s long opening monologue is concatenated from numerous Nixon speeches. Many of the lines of dialogue spoken by Nixon (and Pat Nixon and Ola Florence Welch, Nixon’s first love) are verbatim quotes from various sources.