In the postwar era, countless Hollywood actors have portrayed the American president. A full list would take up pages. Most have endowed the role with commanding authority, wit, severity, and firm-but-fair moral purpose, the latter to rise above partisanship. There were occasional spoofs — Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” and Jack Nicholson in “Mars Attacks” come to mind — but these were few. My own favorite is Henry Fonda in the 1964 film “Fail Safe,” a Cold War classic. American B-58 bombers have missed a recall signal and will soon detonate an atomic weapon over Moscow. In a spartan White House room, he and his Russian translator, played by Larry Hagman, have the grim task of explaining the situation to the Soviet premier. Fonda is austere, lucid, and devastated but fully in charge. He tells his Russian counterpart that in order to avert an all-out war, he will do to New York City what American planes have erroneously done to Moscow. His reasoned approach seems outside human reach given the circumstances.
These days, forced to endure a president who is beyond the scope of caricature and who makes a mockery of American exceptionalism, my mind’s eye often returns wistfully to Fonda. I hope, as my life ebbs, to wake to a Fonda-like figure in the White House, a prospect that for now seems dim.