The Best Portrayal Of A Corrupt President Came In An Unlikely Comedy

Hollywood has been borderline obsessed with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal for over half a century. Plenty of presidents or watershed legislative decisions have gotten adaptations, but given the recency of his crimes, Nixon is on another level. There have been 24 feature films centered on Nixon and/or Watergate, and that's not including the recent influx of prestige miniseries like 2023's "The White House Plumbers" about Nixon's political saboteurs, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy or 2022's "Gaslit," the Julia Roberts-starring series about Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon's at-the-time United States Attorney General.

I was born in 1990, which means my understanding of Nixon until, say, my junior year of high school, was what I had absorbed from pop culture. My introduction to Nixon's resignation speech was when it played over the radio in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and I learned about all of his specific catchphrases and "isms" thanks to episodes of "Futurama." But as I've grown older and finally understood what the hell Watergate was and why we've culturally decided to add "gate" to the end of any controversy, it was an education that weirdly makes me feel a tiny bit patriotic because a president broke the law and actually faced the consequences for doing so (until Gerald Ford pardoned him) — which is no longer the reality we live in.

So, so many people have played Richard Nixon on screen, many of whom are considered some of the greatest actors of our time; Anthony Hopkins in "Nixon," John Cusack in "Lee Daniels' The Butler," Frank Langella in "Frost/Nixon," Kevin Spacey in "Elvis & Nixon," and even Dan Aykroyd's famous portrayal on "Saturday Night Live." But the best portrayal of the corrupt president didn't come from an awards-bait drama, it came in the 1999 too-smart-for-its-own-good teen girl comedy "Dick," with beloved character actor Dan Hedaya as the commander in chief.

"Dick" was one of the many teen films released in 1999, but didn't reach the heights of its contemporaries like "Election" or "Cruel Intentions." Instead, "Dick" joined its edgy sisters like "Drop Dead Gorgeous" and "Jawbreaker" as a box office bomb turned home video cult hit. Directed by Andrew Fleming ("The Craft," "Hamlet 2"), "Dick" was both a farcical satire of the Watergate scandal and a coming-of-age comedy about two teenage best friends experiencing the eye-opening realization that powerful political figures are not only fallible but often operating in their own self-interest. It's a revisionist history film where the at-the-time unknown informant "Deep Throat" was revealed to be two 15-year-old girls. (The real Deep Throat was shown to be former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt in 2005)

Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst play Arlene and Betsy, two D.C. besties who end up in a comedy of errors amid Nixon administration paranoia following the Watergate break-in, and become the official White House dog walkers and secret youth advisors to the president. The goal of Nixon's staff is to make the girls feel special enough to keep quiet about anything they may or may not have overheard during their time in the White House. Nixon spends a lot of time with the girls, and their friendship becomes somewhat symbiotic. The girls feel powerful for being in such close proximity to the leader of the free world, with Arlene even developing a fangirl crush on him, complete with a shrine on her bedroom wall. Nixon, meanwhile, finally has an outlet where he doesn't have to "be the president," and can just hang out eating Hello Dolly cookies and hear about what could help him win over the youth vote.

Nixon is remembered as being a corrupt crook, but lest we forget, he won the electoral vote in a landslide victory with 520 to his competitor Senator George McGovern's 17. Hedaya's performance as Nixon understands that the disgraced president was a straight-up creep, but one that was charming enough to nearly sweep the electoral college.

Tricky Dicky is a now notorious figure, but the smartest thing Hedaya does in "Dick" is refusing to treat him like a criminal mastermind. Richard Nixon was a walking punchline even before the Watergate scandal, with his marble-mouthed words swallowed up by his loose jowls, visible paranoia when met with the slightest push-back, and a less-than-secret penchant for dabbling in alcohol and sleeping pills. Yeah, the dude sucked, but he was also a big enough clown to get busted. "Dick" plays up the fact Nixon was disappointed that his dog Checkers doesn't seem to like him very much (something the man genuinely did worry about, as revealed by his secret tapes). Nixon was pompous but he was also painfully insecure, and Hedaya revels in playing him as a pathetic loser using aggression as a shield to keep people out.

And it works so well because he's playing opposite actual masterminds — teenage girls who have been awakened to the reality that adults will lie to people they deem beneath them to get ahead. When they sell out their former presidential buddy to journalists at the Washington Post, they do it not because they think this is the right call for America, but because Nixon personally hurt their feelings, lied to them, and was mean to his dog. There is nothing more terrifying or powerful than a teenage girl scorned. Don't believe me? Tweet something rude about BTS or Taylor Swift, turn your phone off for the day, and see what you come back to. 

At the end of the movie, Betsy confidently states, "They'll never lie to us again," as Nixon resigns. It's a bleakly hilarious moment considering we all know what would follow in subsequent administrations, but it doesn't make their ultimate revenge of holding up a poster that says "You Suck, Dick!" as his helicopter leaves one last time sting any less to the dishonored official.

No other Nixon flick would include such a juvenile insult, but this is exactly the kind of thing that would get under his skin. In the same way that calling a certain political demographic "fascist" or "bigoted" does little to impact them but calling them "weird" sparks a full-tilt meltdown, Hedaya's Nixon understands the folly of man and how deeply unserious the American political system is and has been for a very long time, despite their decisions having a very serious impact.

"Dick" is currently available to stream on Peacock.