In a 1964 movie, a U.S. President has to overcome a plot by the Joint Chiefs to depose him for being too weak a leader to keep the nation secure. Titled “Seven Days in May,” it was a cautionary tale about maintaining civilian control of America’s might.

This May, in real life, Barack Obama and his military-intelligence apparatus worked together seamlessly to track down and kill Osama bin Laden and, in the President’s retelling of these seven days on 60 Minutes, for a triumph of textbook leadership as it is supposed to function, very much like JFK’s approach to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The boggled mind tries to imagine John McCain in the Oval Office with his quick-on-the-trigger temperament as opposed to the months of information-gathering, planning and what-if gaming that preceded last Sunday’s attack. The even more boggled mind fantasizes about any of the Republican 2012 intellectual dwarves in control.

No less critical is what happens now after the deed has been done.

MORE.