Michael J. Fox Argues It Is Our Duty to Question Leadership
From The American President (1995 movie)
Categories:
Run time: 0:29
Clip Description: In the 1995 movie The American President, Michael J. Fox is scolded for talking back to the President but argues it is Americans’ right and duty to question their leaders.
American Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: This clip can be used to discuss the importance of civic education and being an active participant in a democracy, as well as the concept of freedom of speech.
Possible Uses in Classroom: This clip can be used to discuss civic education and the importance of participating in democracy.
Discussion Questions
- The right to criticize a sitting president feels so settled that it is hard to experience as a right at all. It has not always been settled: Congress made it a crime in 1798 to publish ‘false, scandalous and malicious’ writing against the president, and criminalized speech against the war effort again in 1917 and 1918. What changed — the text of the law, the courts’ reading of it, or simply what the public would tolerate? And which of those three would have to move for criticism to become risky again?
- Strip away the speech and this is an employee contradicting his boss, and the boss runs the executive branch. Everyone in that room serves at the president’s pleasure. What actually makes an advisor willing to say the unwelcome thing — and which structures protect it in practice: civil service tenure, inspectors general, congressional testimony, a leak to a reporter, or nothing but the character of the person in the chair? Rank them by how much you would trust each one.
- ‘It is our duty to question our leaders’ is costless to endorse while watching a movie. So take the version that costs something: the last time you disagreed with a president or a party you support, what did you actually do, and what would saying it out loud have cost you among people whose opinion you care about? Dissent inside your own coalition is exactly the kind the First Amendment does nothing to help with.
Clip hosted on Critical Commons.