ABSTRACT
Some of the famous president films, such as Wilson, Sunrise at Campobello, and Lincoln, have run long relative to the average feature-length movie, perhaps in a kind of formal recognition of their epic subjects. This chapter presents an overview of the the theme covered in the essays of this book. The book focuses on American presidents who have integrated cinema's power into the repertoire of the executive office, and also the presidents who recruited into cinema's project. It moves through different phases in the coarticulation of cinema and the presidency. The book analyses Charles Musser's essay, The Media Reconfigured, which focuses on an early transformation in the media forms used in presidential campaigns. It also focuses Abraham Lincoln and the way his image figured in the first decades of the twentieth century, and provides some measure of the impact television had by showing how, in consequence, image management would become a requisite political talent.
