Darth Vader, the iconic villain in the famed “Star Wars” franchise is the representation of evil, a stand-in for whatever military/political force (hey!) that needs demonizing by a seemingly over-matched rebellion. In many respects, though, Darth Vader while not likely winning the election in 2012, would have been able to take the high road against former, and actual, U.S. President Richard Milhous Nixon. That Vader and Nixon had the same hilariously disarming middle name is not a coincidence. Regardless…
Voice Work:
James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader) could transition from iron-fisted, mechano-man villain to the endlessly comforting Mufusa with damn near indistinguishable ease. Nixon, meanwhile, frequently panicked about the sound of his own voice and commonly referred to himself in third person as “RN.” I’ve never actually talked to anybody who referred to his or herself in third person, but I imagine it’d take about five seconds before I smack them—unless of course he or she were Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or Clint Eastwood.
Racism:
Darth Vader was the enemy of the Jedi but, to be fair, being a Jedi was a conscious decision. Moreover, the Jedi were a dangerous cult with fanatical followers. So Vader’s venom, while misplaced, was one of acceptable intolerance. Vader didn’t blindly massacre a civilian population, like Gungans—despite our pleas for such decisive action during "The Phantom Menace." No, Vader went after people that not only made an ideological choice, but whose choice was a direct result of intensified fighting capabilities. Nixon, though would not have dared to individually hunt down Green Berets. Instead, Nixon focused on bashing, imprisoning and financially handicapping foreigners, Asians and Jews. Nixon used the IRS to target Jewish contributors to the DNC, and when such criminal investigations proved insufficient for imprisonment, Nixon cried that the “IRS is full of Jews.” Foaming at the mouth by this point, Nixon would continue his perpetual, racist, diatribes with words I’m not sure are allowed on the Internet.
"Yes! Score one for ol' RN!"
Executive Power:
Darth Vader supported the Emperor’s restructuring of the Galactic Senate into a series of federated systems in Episode IV. Beyond that, Vader’s macro-politics are only hypotheticals deduced from his personal relations. As is, there is some weight to the theory that Nixon actually wanted to restructure the American political system in a similar fashion during his second term—right around when those “Washington Post Jews" started getting deep throated. More influentially, President/Tyrant Richard Nixon formed the White House Communications Office to allegedly give the American public information without the pesky filter of the press corps. In actuality, the Communications Office became the center of Nixon’s continuous campaign. From this point on, no decision was made in the White House without first considering the effects on re-election. This atmosphere of political paranoia, photo-op details and linguistic nuances was unprecedented at the time but has since become so ingrained with the American political system that fictional characters in this world can become prime-time heroes.
The Chief Historian:
Assuming Darth Vader exterminated the Jedi like a bunch of condors, there doesn’t seem to be any real reflection on history in the original Star War trilogy. Indeed, only a few characters actively recall a universe before “the dark times.” Strangely absently from Vader’s political stranglehold is the near obligatory re-painting of history. Stalin and Hitler personally rewrote history to suit their ambitious, fabricating motivations, precedents and justifications. Hell, even JFK was a psuedo-historian in the 1940s. None though, went so far as Nixon--a history major himself--who tried to fabricate historic/legal documents (memos and the like) to implicate the late-JFK to political disasters such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Now, that scenario already was connected to JFK but its origins date back to the Eisenhower administration (a.k.a. when Nixon was vice-president). Nixon’s relation to the Bay of Pigs was a complete non-issue until RN got greedy and tried to pin it all on, again, an assassinated president.
Sowing the Seeds of War:
Admittedly, the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy had numerous scenes dedicated to outlining the ridiculously circuitous route taken by Chancellor Palpatine to become the Emperor. The tariffs, colonization and free-trade arguments were boring to people barely listening and hilariously illogical to more conscious viewers. In either case, that the Chancellor single handedly started the Clone Wars to gain political supremacy was unabashedly evil. Anakin’s/Darth Vader’s motivation for joining the scheme in the fourth quarter ranged between even more boring to even more illogical. So at worst, Vader’s ambition for power is personal and ambiguous. Conversely, Nixon campaigned in 1968 on the promise of having a “secret plan” for ending the war in Vietnam. This promise was a flagrant lie but helped Nixon because Americans (and the South Vietnamese) would not accept a Johnson peace treaty when the possibility of something better was right around the corner.
Ending the War:
The Emperor drafted Vader and put him into the game in a turn around of about four seconds and effectively ended the war later that night. Nixon, though, would come into power and expand the war he inherited. When the story broke that Nixon had authorized the bombing of Vietnam’s neighbor, Cambodia, the President accused the journalists of weakening national security. This charge of endangering American lives is as baffling as it has proven to be repeatable. America was already bombing Cambodians, and the Cambodians kind of knew they were being bombed. Our "enemies" in war don’t get their information, such as a village massacre, from the Washington Post; they get their information from being in that massacred village.
A Case for Honesty:
A man wiser than myself once said the most important quality for any relationship is trust. Accepting this aphorism, Darth Vader really isn’t that unlikable. Kind of a brutal, leader, yes. But he never went behind people’s backs, tarnished somebody’s reputation or hampered their livelihood—again, except for choking more people than Jack Bauer. Nixon, as historian Lewis Gould has noted, could have gleaned information about the fractious Democrats with a casual reading of his day's newspaper. But accepting common (and correct) knowledge would not satisfy Nixon’s obsession with conspiracies and “reassurance that he was always one step ahead of his unscrupulous enemies.”
Most flatly, Nixon did not trust Americans to make the “right” choice in the voting booth. Through his actions, Nixon, the one man, thought he understood people and the world more than every other president, judge, lawmaker and voting citizen the nation had ever seen, combined.
President Nixon may have been aptly, albeit flippantly, punished in his one-part comical and two-part villainous depictions in American culture from “All in the Family” to “Frost/Nixon,” but Nixon’s legacy has inspired copycats, now aware of their predecessor’s undoing (i.e. getting caught). Ultimately, voters accept that “the ends justify the means” even if the ends are as ill defined as the means are undetermined, so long as the voter had elected the politician in question.
It's just too hard for people to admit when they bet on the wrong horse; preferring to instead blame third parties and any number of unforeseen x-factors. We'd die before admitting our follies. And so ultimately we tend to see the person, not the actions, and that’s just an [expletive deleted].
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