The president stands at the podium in the Capitol, facing us all -- Congress, the Cabinet, a television audience of millions. He struggles for the right words to restore the public's faith in his office.

Will he resign? Will he implicate others? Will he act as the leader of the planet's most powerful country should?

"There are," he begins, "certain things you should expect from your president."

Since a Revolutionary War hero named George Washington recited a 35-word oath in 1789, Americans have expected certain things from their presidents. For good reason: In a society that has mythologized itself from its earliest days, the president is the high priest of the national identity.

For 219 years, the institution has become burdened with legend, and the expectations exceed the grasp of any mortal. Americans' notions of the presidency come from cultural cues we've been conditioned to notice -- from the traits of past presidents, from novels and TV and movies and spin artists who predate the telegraph and the photograph.

From ourselves.

That president standing before Congress and telling the nation about expectations is neither Richard Nixon in 1974 nor Bill Clinton in 1999. In fact, his words were dreamed up by screenwriter, not speechwriter. He is Dave Kovic, the regular-guy doppelganger who accidentally sits in for patrician President Bill Mitchell in the 1993 movie "Dave."

Kovic, played by Kevin Kline, continues: "I ought to care more about you than I do about me. I ought to care more about what's right than I do about what's popular. I ought to be willing to give up this whole thing for something I believe in. Because if I'm not, then maybe I don't belong here in the first place."

In 2008, once again, Americans must decide who belongs in the White House. It is one of the most pivotal elections of our age. But while ours is an era of unparalleled information, it is also one of deep confusion, and we see our presidents through a foggy prism of expectation and paradox.

We demand a leader who represents our loftiest ideals but who is, or appears to be, our peer. We expect competence and smarts but not intellectualism. We want a hardened defender of our interests who can be gentle when it comes time for us to grieve or endure. We want the impossible: lower taxes and higher benefits, tighter security without fewer liberties, success with little sacrifice. We seek cowboy and pioneer, handyman and orator, statue and loving parent -- all wrapped up in the perfectly tailored suit of a CEO.

If anything embodies America's soul, it is the presidency. Pull back the curtain and it's iconic. It smacks of larger things. It's fierce and noble, unifying and divisive. Even in its basest moments, it summons larger ideals about the kind of human beings we want to be.

In it, we are offered a living symbol of sacrifice to greater causes, of empathy, honesty and moral certitude -- a figure who can protect, inspire and unite, who can make us feel better about ourselves and our persistent dream of a shining city upon a hill. Who, we believe, can save us.

You think the presidency is about politics? Sorry. It's the values. No wonder we expect so much. No wonder we create goals that our leaders can never meet. No wonder that, in the end, we're usually disappointed. "People," says historian Richard Norton Smith, "think that presidents were born on Mount Rushmore."

The truth inside the fiction

Dave's fictional oratory rings true -- truer, really, than reality. While its details might be concocted, the mythology is an authentic reflection of what we seek and expect.

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