Hail to the Chief: Presidents in the Movies

How did you celebrate Presidents' Day? If you celebrated it like I did, you worked. Not many people get Presidents' Day off anymore, it seems. But, since the President doesn't seem to get the day off himself, I guess that's OK.

If I had gotten a holiday, though, I would've almost certainly probably celebrated it by watching a movie with a president in it. And I would've had plenty to choose from.

According to the Internet (which is, as you know, never wrong), at least 180 have been made that feature American presidents (not counting fictional presidents, like Thomas J. Whitmore from Independence Day). Of the 44 presidents the United States has had thus far, 38 have gotten their own movies--or, at least, some fictionalized cameos. Abraham Lincoln has addressed the most screen time: A total of 25 actors in 28 separate movies have played our 16th president, from Joseph Henabery in D.W. Griffith's classic (but horrifically racist) The Birth of a Nation to Tom Amandes in this year's Saving Lincoln (now in very limited release). He's backed up Bill and Ted in an Excellent Adventure and spent some time as a vampire hunter earlier this year. And in a week, doppelganger Daniel Day-Lewis could take home an academy award.

It got me thinking about my favorite Presidents--not politically, but cinematically. Here, in the order you would've found them in your American History class, are my top five.

John Adams (Paul Giamatti), John Adams (2008): In the true spirit of American politics, I'm cheating right out of the gate. John Adams was a miniseries, not a movie--but it's simply too good to not list here. The seven-part HBO miniseries eventually bagged 13 Emmys (the most ever by a miniseries) and brought to life the guy who, historically, had the misfortune of getting lodged between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson--two presidents who have their heads on both Mount Rushmore and the spare change you've got in your pockets.

Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis), Lincoln (2012): I've already said a thing or two about this movie. But let me say one thing more: While Day-Lewis has earned plenty of accolades for his work before, this role may make his memorable turns as Christy Brown (My Left Foot), Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York), Daniel Plainview (There Will Be Blood) and all the rest look like mere preamble to this towering achievement.

Ulysses S. Grant (Jason Robards), The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981): OK, so this might not have been the highlight of Robards' career, nor was it probably that great a movie. But I saw it when I was an impressionable kid, and for two weeks I was running around the house loading my toy gun with silver bullets. Robards' Grant seemed like an awfully good president to the little kid me, and as such, I've never fully believed all those nasty things historians have said about him afterwards.

Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), Frost/Nixon (2008): This movie made about $27 in theaters and was still nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. The $27 (actually, about $18.6 million) is easy to explain: Who wants to watch a whole movie about two people talking? The Academy Award nom is also pretty easy to explain: Never, since the original Lincoln-Douglas debates, have two people talking been so riveting. Langella was a favorite to take home the Oscar for Best Actor ... but you can't really argue with Daniel Day-Lewis taking the award home for his turn as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, can you?

George W. Bush (Josh Brolin), W. (2008): Wow, 2008 was a big year for presidents, apparently. While staunch supporters of Dubya weren't thrilled with this Oliver Stone docu-comedy, I actually thought it was more even-handed than it could've been. Brolin's turn as Bush 43 was a bit sympathetic, a bit sad ... and undeniably a very effective acting job.

Faith and Film: Lincoln

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, along with Argo and The Life of Pi, is one of my favorite Oscar-type movies of 2012. Daniel Day-Lewis is predictably incredible. Sally Field shows the same talent that earned her two Academy Awards. My review for Plugged In can be found here, so I won't probably say too much more about it. The movie speaks eloquently enough.

But I did want to point you to a pretty interesting, related article I ran across on the Christianity Today website this morning, written by Lincoln scholar Ronald C. White Jr. White discusses President Lincoln’s mighty second inaugural address, parsing his frequent mentions of God and quotations of Scripture to show how he tried to use faith as a conduit for national healing.

“In a total of 701 words, Lincoln mentioned God 14 times, quoted Scripture 4 times, and invoked prayer 3 times,” White writes. “Lincoln's address provides a model for how Christians can speak of faith and politics together.”

I’d agree. Lincoln used language as well as any president, and the address shows Lincoln at his best, I think: Thoughtful, forgiving, wise. It’s fitting that Spielberg’s movie actually concludes with Lincoln reciting part of his address. There’s a weariness about it; an admission that the country, north and south, have been through a terrible trial unequaled in its annals. It stressed the commonality of the combatants, not their differences, and suggested the whole country was being judged by God (the sort of admission that would get a politician roundly mocked today). And yet, for all its sometimes gloomy realism, it offers a thread of hope—of redemption and healing.  Take a look:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. … Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
   With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

We owe Lincoln a lot and we know it. His kindness and wisdom have become so inculcated in our national heritage that it’s easy to forget or ignore the flip side of Lincoln—the consummate, cagey politician that we see in Spielberg’s Lincoln. I think some people might be surprised, even shocked. Christians who demand their heroes be as pure as a newborn unicorn may, perhaps, think of Lincoln a little less fondly. But it’s good to remember, I think.

Jesus told his disciples to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” And that bit of advice is worth remembering in any age.

A Little After-Election Perspective

As President Barack Obama was mopping up his successful campaign to lead the country for another four years, I was polishing off Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin. For me, personally, it felt like a fitting conclusion to the evening—and really, to this hard-fought election season.

Franklin was America's first Renaissance man—its best-known inventor, philosopher, writer and statesman before the United States officially cut the cord with the British Empire. He was also a man with an ability to get along with folks of all political persuasions (except for his own son, who sided with Britain during the war). That makes him, I think, an inspiring character in an age of bitter partisanship. And even though the guy was not particularly religious—many atheists (wrongly) claim him as one of his own—his spirit of compromise actually had some deeply spiritual underpinnings.

In 1987, four years after the Revolutionary War and as the United States struggled under its Articles of Confederation, an 81-year-old Franklin was asked to participate in a convention to "revise" those articles. As it turned out, the convention opted to scrap the thing altogether and craft a new form of government. But here's the thing: They were creating it from scratch. After all, they had just rebelled against a monarchic government (so in vogue at the time) and had no interest in creating a petty dictatorship. There was no country in the world from which they could model the sort of government they wanted, and there were some wildly different ideas on how it should look. Franklin, for instance, hated the idea of a sole President, preferring a cabinet for the new nation's executive branch. And the legislature? Forget two congressional houses. One will do much better.

Most of the delegates were equally opinionated, and in-house fighting grew quite heated. But as things threatened to spin out of control, Franklin made an interesting proposal: Why don't we pray about it? Writes Isaacson:

Franklin was never known to pray publicly himself, and he rarely attended church. Yet he thought it useful to remind his assembly of demigods that they were in the presence of a God far greater, and that history was watching as well. To succeed, they had to be awed by the magnitude of their task and be humbled, not assertive. Otherwise, he concluded, "we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages."   

Franklin didn't get his prayer: The convention didn't have the money to hire a chaplain. But the point was made. The convention, naturally, went on to craft the United States Constitution—a document that was a product of compromise and imbued with the understanding that none of us are perfect. The Constitution's divisions of power and its system of checks and balances tells us, more than 200 years later, that absolute power cannot be entrusted to one man, or even one body of man. We all need help. We all need guidance. And we work best when we understand there are other, higher authorities watching us.

I wonder, sometimes, if we could use more of an attitude of prayer—not just in politics, but in our daily lives. Prayer is great for a lot of those reasons, of course … but one of the biggest is how it puts us—emotionally, spiritually and often physically—in a posture of humility. It reminds us that we're not as great and cool as we sometimes imagine ourselves to be; that we're dependent beings that need help and guidance. It reinforces that it's not all about us: We're a small piece in a much bigger picture.

Franklin died three years after the convention, leaving behind one of the greatest epitaphs of all time. Though he opted to use something a bit similar for his tombstone, his original seems far more fitting for America's premiere 18th-century wit:

The body of

B. Franklin, Printer:

(Like the cover of an old book,

Its contents worn out,

and stripped of its lettering and guilding)

Lies here, food for worms.

But the work shall not be lost:

For it will, (as he believed) appear once more,

In a new and more elegant edition,

Revised and corrected

By the author.