. >> gangly, big eared, with a shrill voice and a tendency to laugh before anyone else in the room, few presidents seem more unelectable than abraham lincoln. but his leadership in a time when red states and blue states were soaked in blood makes him one of our most beloved americans. a perfect character for a founding father of the blockbuster, steven spielberg, who sat down with his lincoln, daniel day lewis, and our diane sawyer. >> reporter: fascinated by lincoln since he was a child, steven spielberg always wanted to do this movie. america at its finest, with lincoln as the prism for understanding the delicate balance between dedication and doubt. >> i have this recollection from my childhood, when my uncle took me to the lincoln memorial and you're led into this dark, kind of rotunda, and there is a giant sitting in a chair. >> reporter: what did you see in hi face? do you remember? >> i thought he was looking directly at me. and that was it. >> reporter: i'm trying to imagine the two of you as children. >> we still are. >> reporter: okay, makes it easier, it helps. the boy who gr

that's pretty much -- or something about my gangliness. it is a combination and it is a magic 8 ball. look, i know we have to get out of here because you have to teachers and a community college cooking class later. >> you are like a stick of butter which is great because that is half of the important part of frosting. >> i just hope the general petraeus situation can be -- i think it is compared to the general motors fallout. >> did he resign as well? >> i imagine the next step is they willpoint a shrewed japanese person. >> it was better worded. >> i was trying to make it seem conversational. >> no wonder you have to steel your clothes from the laundromat. >> i wrote that onement. >> bill, you married yourself in 2008. do you consider yourself having an affair? >> no career into affect. i don't think it counts as an affair if you have an affair over yourself. i am a terrible sexter. i sext myself to my hot mail account. his sexting is having sex under a desk. in "50 shades of gray" they clear off the top of a desk. >> what a horrible cia

somehow or another found the occasion to compare himself to abraham lincoln, both, after all were tall, gangly lawyers, and both gave speeches in spring field. [laughter] if you look what he says about lincoln, it's revealing. i mean, for him, lincoln stands for self-creation, the ability to restart your life to make yourself into whatever you want to be, to choose your values and pursue your own dreams, your own principles. i'm not sure that that's exactly how abraham lincoln would have seen himself, but that's in keeping with the general liberal approach, which is you're not so much concerned with how someone like washington or lincoln understood himself; you're interested in what use you can make of them in your own time primarily. well, here's where obama goes far beyond old-fashioned liberalism, the creed of woodrow wilson and franklin roosevelt. obama doubts or comes close to doubting the inevidentability of progress, partly because he doubts there's fixed goalposts or standards by which to measure progress. the profit leader, as it were, the great hero of so much liberal political writi