Leading men

We’ve already had one actor  serving as president. Most critics would say that Ronald Reagan (1981-89) wasn’t much of a thespian. And they’d point to his mostly forgettable 60-odd movies and occasional TV gigs as evidence. Still, in the right role, Reagan could make you cry. Take 1942’s “King’s Row,” for instance, where he plays the legless Drake McHugh. Tissue time, dude. And that’s the point, isn’t it? When the actor fits the role, something clicks. The same holds true for actors playing presidents. We’ve had bad ones (Donald Moffat in 1994’s “Clear and Present Danger”), buffoonish ones (Peter Sellers in 1964’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”), tragic ones (Anthony Hopkins in 1995’s “Nixon”) and heroic ones (Cliff Robertson as a young John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963’s “PT 109”).

We’ve even had a few that defy description – most notably Josh Brolin in “W.,” which is still playing in theaters.

Again, though, put the right actor in the right role and you have what we would all want: the perfect combination of talent and temperament to take on the responsibilities of the most difficult job on Earth.

Following are our choices of the movie presidents we’d most like to see voted into office:

“Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939): Let’s start with a real president, one of only two real-life executives on the list. And let’s start with Lincoln because, even in this era of deeply divisive politics, who doesn’t like good ol’ Abe Lincoln?

Many actors have portrayed America’s 16th president, from Ralph Ince and Francis Ford in the silent era to British actor Liam Neeson in Steven Spielberg’s announced project “Lincoln” (due to start filming next year).

But other than Raymond Massey, who received an Oscar nomination for playing Lincoln in 1940’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” the actor most identified with Honest Abe is Henry Fonda, who stars as Lincoln in John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln” (and who plays the fictional American president in 1964’s “Fail-Safe”).

Though it takes liberties with the truth – what Hollywood film doesn’t? – Ford’s film gives us a Lincoln who is courageous enough to confront a lynch mob and country-speech articulate enough to make the mob stand down.

“By jing I said listen to me,” he says. “By jing you will.”

“Independence Day” (1996): If Abe Lincoln managed to face down an angry mob, then fighter-pilot/president Thomas J. Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman in Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day”) deserves mention for is efforts against invading extraterrestrials.

Pullman, an actor who is known for quiet strength, is good throughout the film, but he’s best during the moment we as American citizens would most need a dignified, strong leader: at the moment our troops strike back at the murderous aliens.

“ ‘Mankind,’ ” he says. “That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom – not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution – but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: ‘We will not go quietly into the night!’ We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”

“The American President” (1995): You can argue with his politics, and many will. You can argue with the underlying melodrama that permeates throughout Rob Reiner’s film.

But you can’t argue that Michael Douglas, whatever his limitations as an actor, fails to imbue the character of President Andrew Shepherd with the kind of backbone that we love to see in our leaders.

Even if you disagree with Shepherd’s stand on, say, the Second Amendment, just picture him, as he delivers the following speech, as Ronald Reagan telling Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!”

“America isn’t easy,” he says. “America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the ‘land of the free.’ ”

“Air Force One” (1997): Here’s a no-brainer if ever there was one. The man who played Han Solo cast as the chief executive of the United States.

Wolfgang Petersen has directed better films (1981’s “Das Boot,” for example), and “Air Force One” is far more of an action flick than anything remotely thoughtful and intellectually engaging. But Ford, as president James Marshall, is The Man, one whose Medal of Honor credentials turn out to be well deserved.

You could quote Marshall during one of his philosophical pronouncements: “Peace isn’t merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.” Better, though, would be his final words to Gary Oldman’s villain:

“Get off my plane!”

Fantasy? Sure. But effective all the same.

“Dave” (1993): Kevin Kline stars as mild-mannered Dave Kovic, a guy whose resemblance to President Bill Mitchell (also Kline) is so good that even the president’s advisers can’t tell them apart.

The difference, of course, is only skin deep. So when Mitchell suffers from a stroke and Dave is recruited to play the chief executive more or less full time, Dave’s kindly character begins to make a difference – both to the president’s personal life (he’s married to Sigourney Weaver) but to the country as a whole.

That becomes clear when he foils a plot by Mitchell’s chief of staff (Frank Langella) to take control.

“I’m the president, and as they say, the buck stops here,” he says. “So I take full responsibility for each one of my illegal actions. But that’s not the whole story. I think the American people are entitled to the real truth.”

“Pearl Harbor” (2001): Strange as it seems, we owe this one to Michael Bay.

That’s because in his otherwise history-be-damned study “Pearl Harbor,” Bay included the stirring scene in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Jon Voight) delivers his “a date which will live in infamy” speech.

In movies as diverse as the made-for-TV efforts, 1976’s “Eleanor and Franklin” (starring Edward Herrmann) and 2005’s “Warm Springs” (Kenneth Branagh), to the 1960 big-screen feature “Sunrise at Campobello” (Ralph Bellamy), Roosevelt’s personal story has been explored in and out.

Bay, though, as is his practice, includes only the plot points that propel the action.

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this pre-meditated invasion,” Voight’s Roosevelt says, “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. Because of this unprovoked, dastardly attack by Japan, I ask that the congress declare a state of War.”

“Deep Impact” (1998): He played God in the twin comedies, 2007’s “Evan Almighty” and 2003’s “Bruce Almighty,” so why shouldn’t Morgan Freeman play the U.S. president?

And while it would never be good news to hear anyone declare that a comet was about to hit Earth, that only about a million citizens were apt to survive and that life as we know it was about to come to an end, no one could do it better than Freeman.

“Millions were lost, countless more left homeless, but the waters receded,” he says at the film’s end. “Cities fall, but they are rebuilt. And heroes die, but they are remembered. We honor them with every brick we lay, with every field we sow, with every child we comfort and then teach to rejoice in what we have been regiven. Our planet, our home. So now, let us begin.”

Who wouldn’t respond to that?