All the President's Men

Today being January 20, which is inauguration day here in the US in years that follow a presidential election, I figured today would be the right time to put up a post on a movie that I had on my DVR for several months: All the President's Men.

The movie starts off with a shot of a typewriter typing the date of June 17, 1972. For those who know their history, this is the date on which a security guard at the Watergate complex in Washington DC found a door with the bolt taped so that the door wouldn't lock. Five men are arrested in the break-in, which happened to be the Washington headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The men are found to be carrying surveillance equipment, which would lead some people to question whether or not the burglars were trying to bug the Democrats.

Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards), an editor at the Washington Post newspaper, sends reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) to cover the arraignment, which seems an odd affair since there's a lawyer there who claims not to be representing them and these nobodies have a "country club" lawyer. Some time after the hearing, Woodward gets a call from an FBI agent who tells him that the found some papers on the suspects that linked an "HH" at the White House. Obviously that's a reference to Howard Hunt, who was working for White House Counsel Charles Colson. Woodward later learns that Hunt had previously worked at the CIA.

Then, Bradley tells Woodward that he's puting a second reporter on the case with him, one Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman). They work well together, but as the investigate it seems to be an increasingly sprawling case with so much to try to figure out. It seems to point at president Richard Nixon, busy running for re-election, in some way, and Nixon's campaign committee, but they can't come up with anything firm in part because nobody really wants to speak on the record. And the movie version of Ben Bradlee is one of a man who only wants to print confirmable facts, a massive difference from the news organizations of today.

Indeed, one interesting thing is how, when Woodward and Bernstein are trying to get some background on Hunt, they go to the White House library and the Library of Congress trying to get library records. After the events of September 11, 2001, when the Patriot Act was first up for passage, there were howls of protest that the law might allow the FBI and CIA to spy on what books Americans were taking out of the library. Here, however, going after people's library records is portrayed as virtuous because they're going after those icky Nixon administration types.

As such, as I was watching All the President's Men, I couldn't help but think of another movie, the 1944 biopic Wilson about one of America's nastiest presidents who is whitewashed in a rather hagiographic portrayal. Both movies are extremely well made, while at the same time being utterly self-congratulatory. It's also ironic how Woodward's most famous source, "Deep Throat" (played by Hal Holbrook) turned out to be a former deputy director of the FBI who want to Woodward in large part because he was passed over for a promotion after J. Edgar Hoover's death and wanted to get back at the new boss.

So how much you like All the President's Men may depend on how much you can stomach the journalistic love fest. Considering how much it's become obvious journalism, and even more so the FBI, only investigates based on political affiliation, that love fest may be a bit much for some people to handle.