In a happier and perhaps more democratic era, the belief prevailed that every American came equipped with such reserves of decency and good sense that each of us could make a pretty darned good president if we had to. Remember “Dave,” the 1993 movie in which Kevin Kline, who runs a temp agency, agrees to pretend to be the president and then saves the nation from an evil usurper before revealing the truth and stepping aside to run for City Council? The movie’s tagline: “In a country where anybody can become president, anybody just did.”
