“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Oh, not so fast, Mr. President.

When Richard Nixon uttered those words after losing his 1962 bid for the Governorship of California, I doubt that he had any idea just how long people would be kicking him around. Even worse, I know for certain that Nixon would have been shocked to learn that over 45 years later, Opie Taylor (played by Ron Howard) would be the one doing the kicking. When Nixon held that press conference, The Andy Griffith Show was one of the most popular shows of the time.

Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler all reprised their roles as Opie Taylor/Richie Cunningham, Andy Taylor, and Arthur Fonzerelli to campaign for Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

Click here for Howard’s campaign video for Barack Obama.

To follow up his Fonzi scheme, Howard has released his movie Frost/Nixon, which is based on British television broadcaster David Frost’s 1977 interview with Nixon. Of course, since Nixon was a Republican president, he is fair game. Oliver Stone practically wet his britches to release his “W” even before George W. Bush had left office. Stone himself had his own shot at Nixon in 1994, with Anthony Hopkins playing a perpetually drunk and continuously suspicious President Nixon. James Brolin portrayed an affable but out of touch Ronald Reagan in 2003’s The Reagans.

Let me ask you this: when was the last time a Democrat president was portrayed as anything but a seraph? I can never recall FDR as being depicted as anything less that a wise old grandfatherly type, although his tinkering with government policies prolonged the Great Depression for ten years. Kennedy practically got the United States blown off the map during the Cuban Missile Crisis, primarily because Khrushchev left his 1961 Vienna meeting with JFK knowing the young neophyte could be tested. It is also important to note that Kennedy increased US military presence in Vietnam from 800 to over 16,000.

Lyndon Johnson prolonged the Vietnam War and quit on the American people after discovering the situation would become worse before it would get better. Jimmy Carter came in with a bright smile and white teeth before expanding his own Misery Index from 12% to over 20%, as well as leaving our own citizens held hostage to the early Islamic Jihad in Iran. Bill Clinton spent more time unzipping his pants than zipping up Islamic aggression against the US.

Hey Opie, here’s a movie idea for you: why don’t you do one on each of the catastrophic messes that Democrat presidents have left for Republican presidents to clean up? I’d buy a ticket to each one.