If someone asked me to list some of Richard Nixon's good qualities, after an hour or so of silent pondering and thoughtful chin stroking, I'd still probably have nothing. It's not that there weren't any positive aspects to the Nixon presidency; it's just that I can't think of anything that the monumental shadow of the Watergate Scandal didn't totally eclipse. I guess if I had to put some kind of positive spin on such a disgraceful chapter in American history, I'd say that it was thankfully the only time a president took office through questionable means, needlessly kept our country in a military quagmire fighting another country's war, betrayed the trust and majority will of the American people and got off completely scot-free. Wait, that's a bad example.

OK, I got it! If Nixon has one saving grace, it's that he's almost infinitely mockable. Looking at him, it's hard to believe that he wasn't engineered in a lab somewhere specifically for mocking purposes. His infamous televised debate with JFK, wherein Kennedy walked on stage looking like a life-size, bronzed G.I. Joe doll with glorious hair and a designer suit while Nixon went with the slightly less stylish "jowly, unshaven hobo at a job interview" look is so unbelievable, it's like watching a more politically-oriented version of the movie Twins. Fast-forward 50-some odd years and one can still turn on the TV almost a full two decades after his death and find contemporary examples of Nixon-bashing on shows like Futurama, where the late former Commander-In-Chief is depicted ruling the entire planet as a megalomaniacal severed head in a jar carried around by a headless Frankenstein-esque Spiro Agnew. Yes, so great is Nixon's potential for mockery that it couldn't possibly be contained or exhausted within his lifetime.

He deserves every bit of it.

Our Nixon is the latest from director Penny Lane. Consisting entirely of archival footage, this award-winning documentary chronicles the Nixon administration from the beginning all the way to its shameful end. Throughout Nixon's presidency, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman and Special Assistant Dwight Chapin obsessively recorded their experiences with the President on Super 8 home movie cameras. Their shared compulsion eventually spanned more than 500 reels of film; film which the FBI seized during the Watergate investigation and then subsequently kept hidden away from the public for 40 years.

Using these films, secretly recorded phone conversations between Nixon and his aides - the notorious "Nixon White House Tapes" - archival news reports and later interviews with Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin themselves, Lane paints a very thorough and uncompromising picture of the Nixon presidency. There are no dramatic reenactments, no current interviews with the principles, (which would be quite a feat considering most of the people involved have passed away), and no voiceover narration save for audio from the aforementioned archival sources. The usual documentary tropes aren't necessary. "Tricky Dick" and crew did a perfectly adequate job of hanging themselves without any outside assistance.

OUR NIXON, 2 and 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 19, The Grand Cinema, 606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma, $4.50-$9, 253.572.6062