Who can handle "the pressure?"The new film "Pressure" is an accurate retelling of the fateful days leading up to the Allies’ invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.The success of the D-Day landings were far from a forgone conclusion either as to the date of their launch or its chances of success. Then General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower had to make the decision to "go-no go" in the early days of June 82 years ago, and the pressure on "Ike" was enormous and unrelenting.
Tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives hung in the balance, as did the fate of millions under Hitler’s evil rule.The film provides a superb lesson on such moments and Ike’s (played by Brendan Fraser) willingness to make the final decision amidst the uncertainties of weather and Wermacht deployments is a testament to the granite from which he was made. DOUG SCHOEN: DEMOCRATIC BATTLE PITS MODERATES VS.
PROGRESSIVES FOR SOUL OF THE PARTYIdeally, American voters would look for Ike’s qualities in every presidential election — for the ability to make the best decisions on the most important choices — but that’s not how it turns out.Rarely do voters think about the biggest decisions and who ought to make them.
Usually, voters are carried along by their own sense of their own well-being as well as cross-currents in the culture that are driving deep divides across the country’s vast electorate.If there is an incumbent in the Oval Office seeking re-election, it is almost always a "referendum election" on how he has done in the job. But when there is no incumbent, American voters use entirely different calculations. One theory of how Americans actually pick presidents when "change" dominates the country’s political atmosphere and there is no incumbent: Voters choose the candidate with the personality type most different from the incumbent when the incumbent isn’t running.This grand theory of presidential politics is often associated with David Axelrod, longtime advisor to former President B...