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

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 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 going to be reviewing scenes that feature u.s presidents in films and tv 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's 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 it's on camera he would have shut him down a lot harder than that i have never heard or seen such outrageous vicious started reporting in 27 years of public life the movie centers around the aftermath of the watergate break-in in 1972 operatives for 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 seems like every day a new piece of information would trickle out bringing the the scandal closer and closer to nixon nixon has to resign the first and only president in american history to resign the office you seriously expect us to believe that you had no knowledge of that none i believe 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 dollars 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 hold them down to the dock fingerprint them and then throw them in the can 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 interests 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 emits 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's 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 the constitution more importantly if nobody's going to 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 you know the connections between richard nixon and donald trump are personal are astounding the truth of 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's 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 some place who's going to 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 you lied to me mr lincoln you evaded my request for a denial that 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 other 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 still happens today just a little quieter well you can have that for nothing but we need money towards bribes speed things up a lot of people who vote 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 a 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 because 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 stage now now with a fate of human dignity in our hands what's also fascinating about the 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 you know congressman from mukwonago iowa who is able to clog things up you gotta work with people in the american government to get things done you gotta 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 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 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 going to 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 on to 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 because 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 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's from connecticut his father had been president he went to yale this is a blue blood of american blue bloods yet dubby 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're going to do this thing or whatever is this happening we uh have found some very interesting uh candidates um if we could schedule a three-hour window to i mean 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 the 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 uh different understanding 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 reserve george w bush was kind of a wild man he has had many admitted troubles with alcohol in his early years 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 backslapping he liked the shaken 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 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 reagans 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 goodbye and god bless you 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 president 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 a 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 uh oh hi dutch how are you 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 oh 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 the friends we 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 you know 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 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 in 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've 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 um i don't think it'd be good for you personally and make you look like you've done something wrong who needs that it doesn't matter to me that i can make a change i i get along with everybody this is a good impersonation and a bad impersonation i love the breathing the fact that donald trump you know 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 donald trump anything it'll 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 bowling china shop and that's the way he likes it but i have to rely on people i have all these idiot advisers around who think they got me elected you know i actually listened 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 that 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 mass 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 percent 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 now 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 evasion 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 first-hand 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 him hard and we hit him first containment what is 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 going to 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 911 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 preemptive posture against countries none of whom have 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 anytime 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 a central character and i think it actually shows a consistent sense of george w bush if he operates on truthiness does say things that feel right we can get one democracy going in one of these places iran iraq believe me reagan was right it's going to 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 japan 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 speech writers 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 speech writers made it seem 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 that 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 long crane 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 the sending troops into a sovereign state that hasn't attacked us now that's a pretty tough cell 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 organizations 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 in case you haven't noticed there's a beaucoups of people over here looking to get me a piece 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 policy makers 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 because they dislike somebody more historically the present 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 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 you know his staff in the second term this next film is the wind and the lion directed by john malias 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 had gone 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 the smithsonian institute american grizzly bear is a symbol of the american character so this movie 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 noticed as he's walking throughout the camp people still know he's the president this seems 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 them if everyone could hear what he really sounded like well he wouldn't have sounded quite as 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 in line with his whole way of life american grizzly embodies the spirit of america he should be our symbol not that ridiculous eagle he's no more than an identified vulture roosevelt suggests 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 the real world that was in front of him but he also had the the money to fund his own studies he was a big picture guy on one other trait goes all previous and that mr president loneliness the bear lives out his life alone indomitable and conquered 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 reeling corporations to real 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 going to improve your life no matter where you live the world will never love us they respect us they may even grow to fear us they 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 and 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 13 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 well general uh 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 plants 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 start 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 canadian 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 so i was ready to knock that son of across the room he knew who's coming you give me the order right now my planes will be ready to carry out the airstrikes in three days time all you to do is say go my boys will get those red bastards that was curtis lemay he's the guy who commanded all the us 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 then 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 well maybe you have 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 used 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 pt 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 advisors in close quarters why the am i busy alienating every son of a in my party when if i'm gonna make a run in 68 well i'm gonna need people to 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 you know 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 so 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 he 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 vote for them but for everybody especially those who don't have an advocate for themselves this is john adams directed by tom hopper in this scene gathered around george washington's table alexander hamilton explains his economic plan to thomas jefferson i must admit mr hamilton by a little uncertain as to the purpose of the treasury development 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 world views one way to think about it is the speech that hamilton's 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's 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 essential 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 the 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's opinion why because he's another elected official he's not a chosen advisor from washington george washington wants to make sure that we remain a democracy a small 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 and 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 you know 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 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 he 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 an 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 weighed 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 on our own times throughout the day 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 you 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 [Music]

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 729,285

Rating: 4.7136979 out of 5

Keywords: presidents, reviews, presidential review, tv presidents, film presidents, film and tv presidents, fictional presidents, vanity fair reviews, expert review, experts review, expert reviews, vanity fair, president review, presidents review, lincoln, the comey rule, presidential historian, presidential historian reviews, presidential historian review, presidential historian reviews presidents, presidential historian vanity fair, vanity fair historian, historian

Id: nlnhnb9phBY

Length: 46min 59sec (2819 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020