The powerful emotional connection between Roosevelt and Churchill and how they confronted tyranny and terror is an incredibly contemporary story that yields important lessons for leaders today on a personal, political, and diplomatic level.

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations; Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.

The lesson of the Clinton years and of Obama's win of both the nomination and the general election in 2008 is that Democrats need to be as tough as JFK was.

Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.

Anyone weighing whether to re-elect the President should take the bin Laden operation into account: it is a powerful exhibit that Obama is a steely Commander in Chief - a critical test for many Americans.

The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.