Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis screened Lincoln for members of Congress yesterday. The Senate took an official recess so that senators from both sides of the aisle could watch the film.
While it may be a while before we find out whether Congress learned anything from the movie, President Obama recently spoke to TIME, for a new interview, about what he learned from the Oscar contender. After making clear that he wouldn’t “compare himself to Lincoln,” Obama reflected on the lessons of the film:
I do think that there are lessons to be drawn. Part of what Lincoln teaches us is that to pursue the highest ideals and a deeply moral cause requires you also engage and get your hands dirty. And there are trade-offs and there are compromises. And what made him such a remarkable individual, as well as a remarkable President, was his capacity to balance the idea that there are some eternal truths with the fact that we live in the here and now, and the here and now is messy and difficult. And anything we do is going to be somewhat imperfect. And so what we try to do is just tack in the right direction.
And you do understand that as President of the United States, the amount of power you have is overstated in some ways, but what you do have the capacity to do is to set a direction. And you recognize you’re not going to arrive with—you’ll never arrive at that promised land, and whatever seeds you plant now may bear fruit many years later.
So being able to project across a very long timeline while still being focused on the immediate tug and pull of politics I think is a useful lesson, and an accurate portrayal of how I think about my work day to day.
For Obama’s full thoughts on the movie, as well as comments on his second term, marijuana legalization, and his diary, head over to TIME.
