Presidential Historian Reviews Presidents in Film & TV, from 'Lincoln' to 'The Comey Rule'

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- Now let's understand something about presidents,
first and foremost.
They're all sociopaths.
I mean, think about the ego
that's required to be president of the United States.
When we meet somebody with that kind of ego at a party,
you usually find yourself moving across the room.
Hi, I'm Jeffrey Engel,
director of the Center for Presidential History
at Southern Methodist University.
Today, we're gonna be reviewing scenes
that feature U.S. presidents in films and TV.
[dramatic music]
This is "Frost/Nixon" directed by Ron Howard.
In this scene, which is the real climax of the movie,
Richard Nixon admits to something dramatic
about the Watergate break-in.
- You're quoting me out of context, out of order.
And I might add, I have participated in all these interviews
without a single note in front of me.
- Okay, first off, this is a great impersonation of Nixon.
He's got the mannerisms, he's got the voice.
He's got the head movements, except he's nice.
Richard Nixon wasn't nice.
This man is polite and gentle.
Richard Nixon had a burning fury of anger
in everything he did.
If he thought a reporter was taking him down the wrong road,
even if he was on film, even if he was on camera,
he would have shut him down a lot harder than that.
- I have never heard or seen such outrageous,
vicious, distorted reporting in 27 years of public life.
- The movie centers around the aftermath
of the Watergate break-in.
In 1972 operatives working for Richard Nixon
broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters
basically looking for dirt on Nixon's potential opponents
in the upcoming presidential campaign.
It seemed like every day,
a new piece of information would trickle out
bringing the scandal closer and closer to Nixon.
Nixon has to resign.
The first and only president in American history
to resign the office.
- Do you seriously expect us to believe
that you had no knowledge of that?
- None, I believed the money was for humanitarian purposes
to help disadvantaged people with their defense.
- Richard Nixon did really sit for interviews with Frost
a few years after leaving the White House in disgrace.
However, it wasn't antagonistic.
It was a business operation and partnership between the two.
Nixon was paid $800,000, which is about the equivalent
of about $10 million in today's dollars.
And more importantly,
he was set to get 20% of the profit of any recording sales
that they did for the interview going forward.
And Nixon's own people were encouraging Nixon to say more.
The humanitarian purposes for disadvantaged people
with their defense he's talking about
the guys that broke into the Watergate for him.
And the truth is one of the things
that busted the case wide open
was that one of them admitted in open court
that he was being pressured and bribed not to talk.
So in a sense, the defense
is not for the lawyers necessarily.
The defense that Nixon's paying for is for his own skin.
- Maybe I should have done that.
Maybe I should have just called the Feds into my office,
and said, hey, there's the two men.
Haul them down to the dock, fingerprint them,
and then throw them in the can.
- What we have to understand is that Nixon is in exile.
He's living in California.
He's moved back home in disgrace.
He thought if he told his side of the story,
if people could hear him say it in a controlled environment,
that would reboost his reputation and you know what?
It worked.
- Are you really saying that in certain situations,
the president can decide
whether it's in the best interest of the nation,
and then do something illegal?
- I'm saying that when the president does it,
that means it's not illegal.
- So that's supposed to be the climax of the movie,
the moment when Richard Nixon admits guilt for Watergate.
The truth is he didn't.
Oh, he admitted guilt.
He admitted that he felt guilty feelings
for how bad Watergate was for the American people.
If mistakes were made, he was sorry.
He said out loud,
perhaps I gave the sword to people who used it wrongly,
but I did not wield the sword myself.
The kind of apologies you make
when you don't actually want to admit guilt.
The more fascinating point that the movie
is trying to make here, though,
is Nixon's sense of power of executive authority.
He believed, and frankly, many people believe this today
that the Constitution doesn't really bind the president
as much as one might necessarily think,
that, basically, if the president can do anything
he or she wants that's not written down in the Constitution.
More importantly, if nobody's gonna stop them,
then they can really do a lot.
And that's a central theme of presidents throughout history,
but certainly in Nixon,
and frankly, certainly in more modern days.
The connections between Richard Nixon and Donald Trump
are personal, are astounding.
The truth of the matter is that
what Nixon cared about most was Nixon.
And what Donald Trump cares about most is Donald Trump.
And I assure you, Richard Nixon felt bad about Watergate,
but he felt bad about the fact that he was caught.
There's no sense I think for Donald Trump
that he's ever going to admit that he made a mistake.
Mistakes happen to him.
Problems happen to him, just like Nixon.
- I'm saying that when the president does it,
that means it's not illegal.
- The key line of the movie when Nixon says,
if a president does it, it's not illegal
is something he said, it just wasn't about Watergate.
He was talking about foreign policy.
Now keep in mind, Richard Nixon is the guy
who bombed Cambodia without telling Congress,
without telling the American people.
Expanding a war that was already unpopular
because he thought he had the authority to do it.
So if the president says as commander-in-chief
let's bomb someplace whose gonna say no?
So that he actually said the line he thought that sentiment
just not about Watergate.
This is "Lincoln" directed by Steven Spielberg.
In this scene, Lincoln is discussing the politics
of the 13th Amendment that would ban slavery.
- You lied to me.
Mr. Lincoln, you evaded my requests for a denial,
that there is a Confederate peace offer because,
because there is one.
- No one is surprised when a politician lies,
certainly not their own staff.
They see it up close every day.
Lincoln was a master politician.
I mean, we think of him as the most ethical and moral,
and God-fearing president we had, and he was that,
but also knew how to do some dirty politicking
when he needed to.
One thing that shocked people was the notion that,
oh, my goodness, politicians were being bought and sold,
left, right, and center.
You know what?
Politicians were bought and sold, left, right, and center.
It still happens today just a little quieter.
- Hell, you can have that for nothing.
What we need money for is bribes to speed things up.
- A lot of the people who voted for the 13th Amendment
found themselves with really nice jobs,
say running a postal commission,
or running a port after they left office.
President Lincoln knew how to dole out the goods.
- I can't listen to this anymore.
I can't accomplish a goddamn thing of any human meaning,
or worth until we cure ourselves of slavery,
and end this pestilential war.
- I've seen Richard Nixon, I've seen Ronald Reagan.
I don't know what Lincoln actually looked like moving,
and I don't know his voice,
but they tell us all the people who meet him
in their diaries and letters
that he had a real high-pitched kind of screamy voice.
He was not a baritone.
And Daniel Day-Lewis really embodies Lincoln
in every way possible.
So here we are in the spring of 1865, and the nation
has lost an ungodly number of casualties, 800,000.
In fact, historians keep revising the number of casualties,
and deaths in the Civil War Up.
So the American people are tired.
They're frustrated that the war continues.
- I know I need this.
This amendment is that cure.
- Lincoln wants the war to end as quickly as possible,
but not so quickly
that he can't get everything he wants done politically.
He wants to get the 13th Amendment passed.
The 13th Amendment that would ban slavery forever
in the United States.
Lincoln was frankly never one to think
that blacks and whites were equal.
In fact, he had the idea, perhaps that blacks
could be transported back to Africa after the war
'cause the two races could never possibly live together
in the same country, they were just too unequal.
What he objected to because blacks were human that anyone,
any human should be put into slavery.
And he worried in some ways
that if someone could be put into slavery,
then anyone could be put into slavery.
And the way to keep everyone out of slavery
was to abolish it forever.
- We're stepped out upon the world's stage now.
Now with a fate of human dignity in our hands.
- What's also fascinating about this scene
is that it shows Lincoln yelling, it shows Lincoln angry.
Now Lincoln was an emotional guy.
In fact, we now know that Lincoln
suffered from what we would term depression.
There were periods early in his life where his friends
basically went on suicide watch,
and he's dealing with the pressures,
unlike any other human has ever dealt with perhaps
of how to hold the country together
at a moment when it wants to rip itself apart,
not just for political, but for moral reasons.
- So in point of fact, without my permission,
you ain't enlisting in nothing, nowhere.
- Lincoln did a remarkable job of keeping calm, of cajoling,
of making people feel that he wanted them on their side,
and that he wanted everyone
to be pulling in the same direction.
- Abolishing slavery by constitutional provision
settles the fate for all coming time.
- We have to remember presidents they're not kings.
They're not tyrants, at least not yet.
Every president has restraints upon them.
And yet they all have more power than anyone else.
Sometimes it's a congressman from Mukwonago, Iowa,
who is able to clog things up.
You got to work with people in the American government
to get things done.
You got to work with Congress in particular.
- Slavery troubled me as long as I can remember.
In a way it never troubled my father,
though he hated it in his own fashion.
- And Lincoln who had been in Congress
knew that he could threaten,
but he couldn't actually force people
to vote the way he wanted.
This is "Pearl Harbor" directed by Michael Bay.
In this scene, set in December of 1941,
President Franklin Roosevelt meets with his cabinet
to discuss retaliation against the Japanese
for their attack against Pearl Harbor.
There's nothing basically right about the history
in this movie.
- Is it true men are still trapped alive inside the Arizona?
- We're doing everything we can to get to them,
but they're 40 feet below water.
We'd have to get them within a few hundred miles of Japan,
and therefore risk our carriers.
And if we lose our carriers,
we'll have no shield against invasion.
- The Japanese were not going to invade the West Coast.
Nobody in their right mind thought the Japanese
were going to invade the West Coast.
Everyone feared the Japanese,
but the United States military didn't worry about invasion.
The Japanese didn't have enough ships for that.
So here we have a scene
where the president of the United States
is being told things that he already knows.
What he wants were solutions.
- He's a submariner, he came up with this idea, sir.
- I like sub commanders.
They don't have time for bullshit.
- Roosevelt used to be referred to as the juggler, why?
Because he didn't mind if his right hand and left hand
didn't know what was going on.
He would very famously tell people
to do contradictory things
if he didn't know what was gonna work
because he wanted to find out which one worked fastest.
Do away with the one that's no good.
Keep going with the one that works.
Pearl Harbor, of course, is December of '41.
Franklin Roosevelt had just won another
big electoral victory in November of 1940,
becoming the only president in American history
to ever serve more than two terms.
He was basically hoping to retire
at the end of his second term.
He was an old man, he was a tired man, he was a sick man.
Obviously, he was still living with
the ravages of his polio,
but Roosevelt had a sense that the world was going to war.
And more importantly, he had a sense
that he was needed to lead the country and the world.
So Roosevelt was a man who sought that third term,
and the American people gave him a third term.
He was wildly popular and also wildly hated.
- Do not tell me it can't be done.
- Roosevelt was paralyzed, but in a way
he had taught himself to walk,
or at least to give the appearance of it.
He had those big steel braces that you saw,
and he built up his upper body.
He was incredibly strong up top,
and actually could sort of give the appearance of walking
by throwing his hips and his shoulders back and forth
while holding onto somebody.
Everybody knew he'd been paralyzed.
That's what polio does to people.
What he had to prove
was that he had the physical capacities to do the job.
So the idea that Roosevelt could impress people
by pulling himself up onto a table
they would not be impressed
'cause they would have seen him do that every day.
This is "Vice" directed by Adam McKay.
In this scene, Dick Cheney meets with George W. Bush
to discuss becoming Bush's running mate.
- Distance myself from my years at Yale and Harvard.
Make me more of a man of the people for the election.
- [Dick] Smart.
- Right away in this movie they get to one of the central
questions of George W. Bush's life,
and political life in particular.
Where is he from?
His whole family is from Connecticut.
His father had been president.
He went to Yale.
This is a blue blood of American blue bloods,
yet W. actually grew up in West Texas.
W. decides to buy a ranch, actually, outside of Waco,
and clear brush as his favorite hobby
when he is running for president,
and then when he is president.
As near as I can tell,
he doesn't get back to the ranch much,
now that he doesn't have to worry about voters.
- So, we gonna do this thing, or what?
I mean, is this happening?
- Yeah, I have found some very interesting candidates.
If we could schedule a three hour window to.
- No, I meant you, I want you to be my VP.
- I love the way this movie portrays ideas
without actually saying them.
Look at the contrast between these two.
Dick Cheney is restrained.
A man who knows what he wants to say
before the words have even formed in his mouth, not so W.
W. is exuberant, look how he's eating those chicken wings.
He loves life, he grabs everything and rushes right into it.
In a sense, this gives us a good sense
of their personalities that W. was the outgoing man.
Dick Cheney, the inner looking man.
- I have been secretary of defense.
I have been the chief of staff.
The vice presidency is mostly a symbolic job.
- Vice presidents, historically,
have not been particularly important.
In fact, I would argue Walter Mondale is really the first
to have a policy influence on the administration.
And that Dick Cheney essentially took the vice presidency
in ways no one had ever done before.
Washington was filled with rumors that, in fact,
Bush was just a puppet, if you will.
Now, I don't think that's true.
In fact, I think by the end of the administration,
by the second term,
especially after much of Cheney's advice
had completely gone awry from the first term,
W. had no longer much interest in what Cheney had to say,
but the central tension of their relationship existed
throughout the eight years of his presidency,
which is, was the president in charge,
or was the vice president pulling the strings?
- However,
the vice presidency is also defined by the president
if we were to come to a different understanding.
- Uh-huh.
- This is great, but not subtle.
Cheney is a fly fisherman.
Cheney spends a lot of time laying out some line,
and reeling things in,
and that's what he's doing with the president here.
The movie is suggesting that Cheney
who had been head of Bush's committee
to find a vice president
actually wanted the job himself the entire time.
I think that's probably right.
One of the things we see in "Vice" is George W. Bush
before he's in office, and before he has the full weight,
and responsibility of being president.
Bush, of course, is born into a political family.
His father had been president,
and in some ways he's been trying to emulate his father
his entire life, but in a different way.
Whereas, George H.W. Bush was genteel and reserved,
George W. Bush was kind of a wild man.
He has had many admitted troubles with alcohol
in his early years.
He finally found faith,
found the strength to give up alcohol,
and became a business person,
actually owner of the Texas Rangers.
And he liked to be a very public owner of the Rangers.
He liked the backslap and he liked the shaking hands.
Leave the details to the other guys.
George W. Bush made decisions as he says with his gut.
This is, actually, I think one of the most accurate.
It's made in 2018 talking about the early 2000s,
so it's not hard for them to get the clothes right,
or the talk right, or the haircuts right.
And I think they actually nailed Dick Cheney as well.
He's a man who is sincere, he's reserved, he's in control,
but you know what else he is?
He's sure, Dick Cheney is certain about the things
that he's certain about and he's willing to do anything,
anything to get them.
- This is a skit from "Saturday Night Live."
In this scene, we see two different Ronald Reagan's.
One who's clueless in public, but behind closed doors,
the one who's really in charge.
- Well, I hope I've answered your questions
as best I could given the very little that I know.
[laughter]
Good-bye, and God bless you.
- [Woman] Thank you Mr. President.
- Thank you very much.
Okay, get back in here.
All right, let's get down to business.
I'm only gonna go through this once,
so it's essential that you pay attention.
- This is Ronald Reagan's second term.
Ronald Reagan who had been
one of the oldest men ever elected presidents,
and Ronald Reagan, who frankly,
was never much on top of the details.
He was a real delegator, a big picture guy, if you will.
So this skit is one joke.
The idea that this man who's barely awake sometimes,
and who can't keep track of details
is actually masterminding global conspiracies.
The truth is Reagan was not masterminding
global conspiracies.
Reagan was that kindly, nice, quiet man,
with a big idea and big optimism
who did like to meet with Girl Scouts,
and did like to talk to reporters,
but didn't like to tell them too much.
The Reagan who is pictured here behind the scenes
is never a Reagan that existed,
and certainly not by the second term.
So we're supposed to laugh if we're Americans in the 1980s
at the very notion
that our president was actually in charge.
Ronald Reagan let other people bring decisions to him,
which he approved.
- Hello, Jimmy.
- Well, hi, Dutch, how are you?
Yeah, yeah, oh, I'm sorry, Mr. President.
You know, I have the hardest time getting used to that.
- Well, we sure had great times back in Hollywood.
- You can say that again, Dutch.
- So Jimmy Stewart shows up.
Well, that's not a surprise.
Ronald Reagan had been a Hollywood guy.
In fact, Ronald Reagan,
back in the days when he was a Democrat
had been actually the head of the actors union.
And he liked bringing his Hollywood friends
to the White House
because those were the closest things he had to friends.
He had a lot of acquaintances.
He had a lot of people that liked to be with him,
and that he liked in some sense,
but what he really liked was being alone,
or at least with Nancy.
The average evening for the two of them in the White House
was to retire at the end of the day,
usually about five o'clock watching old movies.
That was when Reagan was happiest.
- Mr. President, you're going so fast.
There's still a lot about the Iran-Nicaragua operation
I just don't understand.
- And you don't need to understand.
I'm the president, only I need to understand.
- The Iran-Contra controversy
that's at the heart of this skit was a big deal.
Ronald Reagan, frankly, should have been impeached.
He did more than most of the presidents
who have been impeached to be impeached.
The American public wasn't really interested in that
just a few years after Watergate,
and frankly in the middle of a president's second term,
a president who the American people liked,
he was very popular.
So there's a real sense in which Ronald Reagan
was able to have subordinates manipulate
the international system with actually no consequences.
He's one of the first presidents that we refer to as Teflon,
nothing sticks to this guy.
This is "The Comey Rule" directed by Billy Ray.
In this scene, newly elected President Donald Trump
demands loyalty from FBI director, James Comey.
- Press has been very unfair to you.
I know about that.
Nobody gets treated as unfairly as I do, it's disgraceful.
- The scene and the context matters here.
President Trump is meeting one-on-one
with FBI director, James Comey.
President Trump is a business guy.
He's never been in government before.
He thinks that's the way things operate.
He thinks he can talk to anyone without any consequences.
The truth is there used to be rules in Washington,
or at least understandings.
One of them was that an FBI director in order to make sure
that he was not politically influenced by the president,
in order to make sure that he was independent
to do his job as confirmed by Congress would never meet
with the president of the United States one-on-one.
If there's no one else in the room,
there's no one else to attest to what you said.
That's why Comey took notes
because he knew every time he met with the president,
it was something he shouldn't be doing.
- I don't think it would be good for you personally.
It would make you look like you've done something wrong.
Who needs that?
I mean, it doesn't matter to me that I could make a change.
I get along with everybody.
- This is a good impersonation and a bad impersonation.
I love the breathing.
The fact that Donald Trump inhales dramatically
through his nose before he says something.
Why is it a bad impersonation?
Do you notice this actor is using complete sentences?
Donald Trump has never finished a sentence
as near as I can tell,
and his supporters love that about him.
He moves from idea to idea to idea they say.
Just try one time to write out a transcript
of a Donald Trump speech,
or a Donald Trump press conference,
or a Donald Trump anything, it will hurt your hand.
There are some consistent traits among presidents.
One of them, frankly, is typically hard work.
Donald Trump is different,
which is why his supporters love him.
He speaks brashly.
He doesn't necessarily care about the impact of his words.
He's a bull in a China shop and that's the way he likes it.
- And I have to rely on people.
I have all these idiot advisors around
who think they got me elected.
You know who I actually listen to, TV people.
- One thing we know about Donald Trump
is that he watches a lot of television.
How do we know this?
Because he tells us, he tweets about shows all the time.
That's what he thinks is important about his presidency,
how it's perceived, not the policies.
It's how it looks on TV that matters to him.
Not surprising as a former TV star.
No other president in American history has come into office
without having either been a general,
or having held elected office before.
Donald Trump has done neither.
Donald Trump is unusual in every way
that he approaches things,
which is frankly why most of the people
who wind up working for him who have government experience,
wind up resigning.
They don't understand what it's like to work for a man
who doesn't understand the basic ways that government works.
- Well, you can rely on me, sir, to tell you.
- I need loyalty.
I expect loyalty.
- James Comey was the same FBI director for Obama,
as he was for Donald Trump,
a person who thought his loyalty was to the department,
and to the law and to the American people,
not to the president.
This is why Donald Trump broke the law
in trying to influence the FBI director.
If you are under investigation by the FBI,
which Trump was for his dealings with Russia,
and the Trump campaign was,
and you try to influence or intimidate,
or purchase the loyalty of your prosecutor
that's jail time in a normal circumstance.
One of the first things Donald Trump did in office
was frankly try to buy the influence and the judgment
of a person who has loyalties not to the White House,
but to the Constitution.
The show tells us that Trump tries to run the government
like his own personal business, which it just isn't.
This is "W." directed by Oliver Stone.
In this scene, President George W. Bush
meets with his advisors to discuss
potentially invading Iraq or Iran.
And if so how to market it to the American people.
- Weapons of destruction
make these countries more dangerous.
We've got to begin educating the public about
the size of this war and its implications.
- You have an approval rating
of more than 80% right now, sir, it's just astounding.
- This is after 9/11 and more importantly,
after American forces appear to have
stabilized things in Afghanistan,
and the Bush administration begins looking for,
well, the next target.
This is one of the open questions
that historians are going to be asking for generations.
When exactly did George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq?
Now, the invasion happens in March 2003,
September 11th is obviously September of 2001.
Some point in there, we know that Bush made up his mind.
What's critical is that this question of
what to do with Iraq actually comes up we know
from firsthand accounts on the evening of September 11th,
the critical moment of Bush's decision
whether to invade Iraq or not was at least on the table
during the worst moment of his presidency.
- Given your strong commitment to democracy,
do you think that Iran
should be lumped together with Iraq and North Korea?
After all Iran has a democratically-elected president.
- That's Condoleezza Rice, unbelievably fascinating woman.
I mean, just imagine what it was like for her entire career
to be not only often the only woman in the room,
but oftentimes the only black person in the room.
And certainly, therefore, the only black woman in the room.
And yet also to know that she was the one who was bringing
the most information to the table.
- We're gonna get hit again, we all know that,
unless we go out there and we hit them hard,
and we hit them first.
- Well, containment won us the Cold War, sir.
- Well, some people might just say
that Reagan won the Cold War, general.
- It is considered dogma within Republican circles
that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War
because he outspent the Soviets, but more importantly
because he called out their moral failings.
The Soviet Union fell and communism collapsed,
and democracy seemed to spread everywhere
in the early 1990s.
One of the things that the George Bush administration
never really considered, I would argue,
is what they're gonna do with the democracy
when they get it.
If you give people the right to choose their own leaders,
what happens when those leaders do things
that we don't like?
We are just in the second year of the Bush administration
when as Karl Rove in this film notes,
President Bush's approval rating is sky high,
as powerful perhaps,
as almost any president in the 20th century.
He therefore felt that he had both free reign
to do what he wanted in the world,
but here's the more important part.
I think he and those around him thought
that the world was confirming just how right they were.
They'd never been in charge of something
that had gone wrong, well, yeah, 9/11 was bad,
but that was a surprise they would tell you,
and consequently, when they thought about where to go next,
it never occurred to them that it could go bad.
Afghanistan continues on,
and becomes the longest war in American history.
This period of the movie
is when things seem to be going right.
And when George W. Bush thinks
he's got this presidency thing down.
- No, I'm not saying war.
I'm saying lay down the law.
- But the speech, as written,
is taking a preempted posture against countries,
none of whom declared war on us.
- Here I think we need to be a little bit sympathetic
to the Bush administration.
We had just been through an unprecedented terrorist attack.
We had just suffered through anthrax attacks.
The expectation was not that there was going to be
one additional terrorist attack,
but multiple terrorist attacks.
They could come at any time, anywhere, in any place.
The idea that American policymakers
would look for solutions for security
shouldn't surprise us.
The problem was they wound up looking for solutions
in places where the problem wasn't in the first place.
Iraq was a country that frankly was contained.
Both "Vice" and "W."
of course, have George W. Bush as the central character.
And I think it actually shows a consistent sense of
George W. Bush is he operates on truthiness,
that is to say things that feel right.
- If we can get one democracy going in one of these places,
Iran, Iraq, believe me, Reagan was right.
It's gonna spread to all these countries
because people want freedom.
- George W. Bush was a man who came to the office
with relatively limited government experience,
extremely young,
not much experience in business and found early success.
And that early success,
he thought confirmed just how good he was.
- What about axis of evil?
- Axis of evil.
Evil, yeah, I like the ring of that, that's good.
- Mr. President, axis brings up World War II.
You can't link Germany and Japan with Iraq and North Korea.
- Now the axis of evil that they're discussing here
stems from a speech that Bush gave in 2002,
connecting Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
And he references specifically, of course,
the axis powers of World War II
as Colin Powell in this film scene tells us.
The problem is in World War II,
the axis powers were actually allies.
So essentially George Bush's speechwriters
come up with a phrase that sounds great,
but has almost zero geopolitical use.
What they were really trying to say
was that each of these countries were threats
for independent reasons, but by linking them as an axis
Bush's speechwriters may have seemed as though
they were actually all on the same side.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
One of the things the movie gets right
is showing his enthusiasm for the war.
One of the things the movie gets wrong.
The scenes where we see the president and his advisors
celebrating the victory are as fictional as one can imagine.
It's not even possible
for the president to meet with all of his advisors
in that close quarters during a war.
And certainly not one where they would jump up,
and watch military affairs in real time and slap high fives.
This is "The Special Relationship"
directed by Richard Loncraine.
In this scene, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair
tries to convince American President, Bill Clinton,
that ground forces are needed in Kosovo.
- I just don't see how he can take us seriously.
- Look, I hate Milosevic as much as the next guy,
but sending troops into a sovereign state
that hasn't attacked us, now that's a pretty tough sell.
- There's a whole lot of geopolitics in this scene.
After the Cold War,
the United States was the most dominant power
perhaps the world had ever seen.
Its main military alliance in Europe was NATO,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
So now the real question is how does Europe defend itself?
And what role does NATO play?
So essentially what we have here is a European leader
pleading with the United States
to solve a problem in Europe,
which means Bill Clinton, the American president,
isn't too keen to get involved.
- I want to do it because it's the right thing to do.
- We both want to do the right thing,
and mobilizing NATO so it's ready to strike
is the right thing to do.
- [Tony] But Bill.
- In case you haven't noticed there's beaucoups of people
over here looking to get me impeached.
- There's a whole lot going on
in Bill Clinton's life at this time.
He is about to be impeached
for having a sexual scandal with a White House intern.
And Clinton knows that he has no political wiggle room
whatsoever to make any mistakes,
or to rally the American people in a war
they don't want to fight
when he has no political capital back at home.
The movie is called "The Special Relationship"
and that's not by accident.
British and American policymakers have talked about
their special relationship for decades.
They both read the same books and think in the same terms.
And more importantly,
they seem to consistently have the same enemies.
I mean, the truth is alliances aren't made
because people like each other
it's 'cause they dislike somebody more.
Historically, the president of the United States,
and the prime minister of Great Britain,
they're as close as two allies could ever want to be.
In some ways, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair
were the same person.
They were the first of their generation
to take power in each of their countries.
They thought of themselves as kindred spirits, as cousins,
they saw the world the same way.
And Clinton having gotten there just a few years before
saw himself as a mentor to Blair.
Dennis Quaid plays Bill Clinton,
and frankly does a pretty good job.
First, they show him on the golf course.
That's something Clinton liked a lot.
And Clinton liked to talk.
Clinton would talk all the time.
In fact, Clinton rarely slept.
That was actually one of the things that caused him trouble
in his relationship with his staff in the second term.
This next film is "The Wind and the Lion"
directed by John Milius.
In this scene, Teddy Roosevelt talks about
a bear he's hunted and compares it to the United States.
- Yes, this is the bear
that attacked the horse camp at dawn.
He knew that men would be asleep, or at their worst at dawn.
- Do you intend to have this bear
as a rug in the White House, Mr. President?
- Rug, no.
No, I intend to have him stuffed and placed on exhibit
at the Smithsonian Institute.
The American grizzly bear
is a symbol of the American character.
- So this movie is set in 1904 with Theodore Roosevelt out
doing one of the things he liked to do, hunting and riding.
He only went out West
after the tragic loss of his wife during childbirth,
and the loss of his mother on the same day.
He went out West for a few months to clear his head,
and found out that he loved not just the strenuous life,
but the outdoor life,
but notice as he's walking throughout the camp,
people still know he's the president.
This scene is pretty good.
Roosevelt is the closest thing we have
to a genuine Renaissance man in the White House.
He was incredibly athletic.
He was incredibly smart.
The man wrote 50 books over the course of his lifetime.
He could converse with anyone on a high plane.
The high part is what I don't like.
Roosevelt had a squeaky voice.
- Are the American people fit to govern themselves,
to rule themselves, to control themselves?
- If everyone could hear what he really sounded like,
well, he wouldn't have sounded quite as manly
as he wanted them to think he was.
- We're accustomed to wild animals taking flight
at the sight of men with guns.
The American grizzly fears nothing.
- But the idea that Roosevelt could sit down with reporters,
and talk philosophically,
in some ways write stories for them.
That's perfectly aligned with his whole way of life.
- The American grizzly embodies the spirit of America.
He should be our symbol, not that ridiculous eagle.
He's no more than a dandified vulture.
- Roosevelt suggested in this scene
that we should change our national symbol
from the American eagle to the grizzly bear.
The bear he said was strong, it was powerful,
but it was also alone.
It has separate place in the world,
whereas an eagle is just a scavenger.
This is the kind of thing
that Theodore Roosevelt would have done.
What's more likely is that he would have sent it
to the Natural History Museum in New York City.
You know, the one with the big Roosevelt statue in front,
the one that's dedicated in many ways to Theodore Roosevelt
because his family gave the money for it.
He was a naturalist.
He believed in studying the real world
that was in front of him,
but he also had the money to fund his own studies.
He was a big picture guy.
- And one other trait that goes with all previous.
- And that, Mr. President?
- Loneliness, a bear lives out his life alone.
Indomitable, unconquered, but always alone.
- And this is why I don't really like this scene
because he suggests that Americans are lonely, are isolated.
That wasn't Roosevelt.
He thought Americans were integrated,
should do more overseas,
but the idea that the United States would have no allies,
wouldn't jive with Roosevelt
because he thought that the United States
was supposed to be a leader of nations
that we would lead and people would follow.
Roosevelt was one of the key leaders
in a movement that we now call the Progressives.
People who thought that government could be used
to reel in capital, to reel in corporations,
to reel in monopolies.
He believed in progressivism by which he meant progress.
We need to make the country better.
He knew that he was at the top of the food chain,
and he wanted to stay at the top,
but he also knew he could appeal to people
throughout the American electorate
because he could say to them,
I'm gonna improve your life no matter where you live.
- The world will never love us, may respect us.
May even grow to fear us, but will never love us.
- So Roosevelt leaves office in 1909,
and discovers he doesn't like not being in office.
So he came back and ran against his own party in 1912.
They wouldn't have him the Republicans,
so instead he forms another party, the Progressive Party.
During that campaign in Wisconsin, he was shot.
Now the bullet, thankfully, went through his jacket,
but then it landed in his eyeglass case.
And then in the 75 pages of the speech he was about to give,
he goes to the fairgrounds to give his speech,
and he stands up and says, essentially,
they tried to kill me.
That's how afraid they are of the change
I'm going to bring to the country, opens his shirt.
Look, I have blood from the assassin's bullet.
If he had walked off the stage at that point,
I think it would have gone down
as the greatest speech in election history.
Instead he talked for another 90 minutes.
He gave his speech kind of underplaying
the drama of the idea that he had been shot.
This is "Thirteen Days" directed by Roger Donaldson.
In this scene, JFK is meeting with his top military advisors
on how to deal with the supposed nuclear missiles in Cuba.
- General, how long until the army is ready?
- We've just begun the mobilization
under cover of a pre-arranged exercise, sir.
We're looking at another week and a half.
- But you can order the strikes now.
The plans call for an eight-day air campaign.
- This is October of 1962.
American spy planes have discovered
the construction of Soviet nuclear facilities in Cuba,
90 miles away from America's shores.
The presumption in real life
is that there are no missiles there.
That they just started building
these construction sites for them.
In the movie it's a little bit more tenuous.
Throughout this scene
they'll discuss the missiles being there.
They didn't think the missiles were there,
but here's the kicker, here's the real fun part.
The Kennedy administration real life was wrong.
There weren't nuclear missiles in Cuba,
but there were nuclear weapons.
- Longer range IRBMs.
They can hit every place in the country except Seattle.
- So every person that we see in this movie
is a real person except Kevin Costner.
He's a character that they created
in order to have conversations recorded in the room.
He's there as a dramatic device
with a terrible Boston accent.
- Because I was ready to knock that son of a bitch
across the room.
- We knew it was coming.
- You give me the order right now.
My planes will be ready to carry out the air strikes
in three days' time, all you got to do is say go.
My boys will get those Red bastards.
- That was Curtis LeMay.
He's the guy who commanded all the U.S. bombing of Japan.
He's the man that thought up the idea that,
well, we could strategically firebomb,
and starve the Japanese into submission.
Remember more Japanese died in individual attacks in Tokyo,
and other cities organized by LeMay
than were killed during the atomic bomb strikes.
So this is a man who had,
shall we say no compunction using force.
This movie gets right a real key dynamic
of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
which is that John Kennedy was not liked,
or respected by many of his generals,
Curtis LeMay, in particular, and you can understand why.
John Kennedy had been a lieutenant in the Pacific theater.
Curtis LeMay had been in charge of the entire Air Corps.
And they didn't like the idea.
This young whippersnapper was the man in charge,
and they didn't miss many opportunities
to remind him of that.
- You're in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President.
- What did you say?
- You're in a pretty bad fix.
- So maybe you haven't noticed you're in it with me.
- That exchange happened.
It's really a dramatic scene that shows how enthusiastic
LeMay and others were to use military force,
and how reticent Kennedy was.
This is really the great secret
of Kennedy's brilliant diplomacy during this period.
He bought time to consider other options.
Curtis LeMay wanted to bomb yesterday.
John Kennedy found that he could use
all 13 days of the crisis to find the one peaceful avenue
out of what seemed like a sure course to nuclear war.
There are two things that people need to appreciate
about John Kennedy the person.
The first is how sick he was and how much pain he was in.
He was a genuine war hero.
He had broken his back as a P.T. commander
during World War II.
And he also suffered from a variety of adrenal,
and gland diseases.
He basically was in constant pain,
which meant he was constantly being revved up
by amphetamines, painkillers of all kinds.
He was a walking drug store.
The other thing about Kennedy
was he liked his relaxation time,
and he liked his relaxation time to be not by himself,
and not necessarily with the comfort of his wife.
John Kennedy let's say had a good time,
but he had had some trip-ups.
Essentially everywhere that Kennedy turned, he talked tough,
but it looked as though he wasn't willing to back it up.
He was personally popular then,
but people were still wondering
even as late as two years into his administration,
if he was really up to the job.
This is "LBJ" directed by Rob Reiner.
In this scene, LBJ is having a policy discussion
with some of his closest advisers in close quarters.
- Why the fuck am I busy alienating
every son of a bitch in my party when
if I'm gonna make a run in '68,
well, I'm gonna need people to fucking like me.
Shut the door.
- You're probably wondering what you're watching.
Did LBJ actually have meetings while sitting on the toilet?
The thing that's really wrong about this movie
as near as I can tell is that LBJ just said close the door.
LBJ wasn't somebody who was interested in privacy, why?
Because everything he did was about power.
The reason he had meetings on the throne
was because you have to be there uncomfortable,
and listening to him.
So LBJ being a crass, vile, profane guy
who wants other people to see him doing his business
that's about right.
He also was a very large man.
He liked to use his physical body
to do what they called the Johnson treatment.
Essentially, he would get closer and closer and closer,
and closer to you while he was talking, leaning over you,
'til frankly, you finally agree with him
because you were too afraid to do anything else.
LBJ was, yes, a good old boy from Texas.
And he was also the smartest guy in the room.
The story of LBJ and civil rights
is one of the most fascinating,
and important sagas of American history, frankly.
Here's a guy from Texas, grew up in Jim Crow South.
Voted as a legislator for lots of
Jim Crow anti-black policies.
When he becomes president does the unexpected.
He winds up being a champion for civil rights.
Why did LBJ change?
He told us that when a person becomes president,
they suddenly feel responsible for every citizen,
not just the ones that voted for him, but for everybody,
especially those who don't have an advocate for themselves.
This is "John Adams" directed by Tom Hooper.
In this scene, gathered around George Washington's table,
Alexander Hamilton explains his economic plan
to Thomas Jefferson.
- I must admit, Mr. Hamilton, I am a little uncertain
as to the purpose of the treasury department.
No doubt its function will reveal itself to me in good time.
- I think everybody at this point knows that
Hamilton and Jefferson despised each other,
they had different worldviews.
One way to think about it is the speech that Hamilton
is about to give explains to us
the importance of financial power,
and of structures of government,
and Jefferson counters talking about liberty and freedom.
In essence, Jefferson is a man who thinks
the world is moved by ideas.
Hamilton is a man who thinks the world
is moved by money and power.
- The future prosperity of this nation
rests chiefly in trade.
Trade depends among other things
on the willingness of other nations to lend us money.
- So Thomas Jefferson was concerned about central authority.
So was everybody else,
but the truth is in the late 1780s
after the Revolutionary War,
but before the Constitution was signed,
people longed for central authority because chaos reigned.
It was a terrible Great Depression.
Perhaps as bad as the Great Depression,
there was essentially lawlessness going on.
And there was no central authority
who could put things in order.
The Constitution in many ways
is a remarkably conservative document.
It's about keeping things in check.
The Declaration of Independence is the radical document
we must break with the world.
Jefferson who wrote the first,
I think in some ways never fully appreciated the second.
This scene demonstrates really Adam's discomfort
within the Washington administration, why?
Because he was vice president and Washington makes clear
that he does not really consider
Adams a member of the cabinet.
Washington does not want Adams' opinion, why?
Because he's another elected official.
He's not a chosen adviser from Washington.
George Washington wants to make sure
that we remain a democracy with a small-d,
a republic with a small-r.
John Adams had suggested
that perhaps we should call the American president
his excellency the president, and go on and on and on.
Washington said, no, Mr. President will do.
- Mr. President.
- Mr. President, nothing more.
- "John Adams" is a great representation
of the early colonial period
in the early national period for the United States.
The clothes are right, the looks are right.
Frankly, the fact that people seem a little dirty.
There's a wonderful scene in here with George Washington
talking about his wooden teeth.
Well, he didn't just have wooden teeth, of course.
He had actual teeth that were taken from his slaves,
and implanted in his own mouth.
They didn't go quite into that detail in "John Adams,"
but they certainly give a good sense of what it was like
to be in these hot stuffy rooms without air conditioning,
fully buttoned up in those clothes made of wool and cotton,
working through some of the toughest issues of the day.
There's also a real sense that John Adams,
not necessarily somebody you wanted to hang out with.
He was not the most fun guy in the room.
So the men around this table are iconic.
We call them the Founding Fathers.
George Washington, who, of course, was the virtuous man,
the man who, yes, had led American forces in the Revolution,
but he wasn't respected and elected president
just because he was the smartest guy in the room.
He was the most trusted.
He was the one who you knew
if he said something he meant it.
Thomas Jefferson, now he may have been the smartest guy
in the room, at least he thought so.
And he was activated by ideas.
He was a romantic at heart.
Jefferson actually is full of contradictions.
A man who writes about freedom
yet actually had his slave children,
those children he had with one of his slaves
wait on his white children.
And he was able to recognize the complexity of that
yet never find a solution to it.
And then, of course, there's Alexander Hamilton,
the orphan boy from the Caribbean
who winds up becoming secretary of the treasury.
And I would argue perhaps the most influential
of all of Washington's first cabinet,
the man whose mark we still see today.
These men defined our country then,
and still do even in own times.
Throughout today we've seen presidents
from George Washington
all the way through up to Donald Trump.
And I think we've seen an evolution
of the presidency as well.
The president becomes obviously more powerful,
becomes more important in everyone's immediate lives.
He becomes more important in the function of government.
And we see time and time again in these movies,
presidents who are willing to have difficult conversations
with their advisors that they are not necessarily willing
to have with the American people.
And increasingly, especially,
as we get into the age of Trump,
presidents who are willing to have conversations
that they're not willing to admit happened.
Ultimately, we see the presidency in the film
is a presidency that frankly reflects the power of America,
and also the perils.
These films show us
that the person in charge affects your life.
Go vote, you're the boss.