I really enjoyed this movie. It's reassuring that historical movies with lots of talking in them will still sell. It's reassuring that the events, though "storyboarded", have not been too egregiously tampered with.

Like numerous critics, I was impressed by Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of the lanky, folksy, burdened, driven Lincoln.

Mostly, however, I appreciated the movie's presentation of the political virtue of political pragmatism.

Lincoln focused his sights on a noble objective. But he got there by sheer commonsense and political knowhow. He didn't let the aspirational "best" become the enemy of the achievable "good". As attested by the highly principled US Representative Thaddeus Stevens (who himself has to learn the art of compromise), the emancipation amendment was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America".

So often, the high-minded berate the pragmatists for their flexibility, their readiness to compromise, their willingness to come down off their high horses and grub around in the horse-muck of the trading floor. And certainly, it's much more morally satisfying to remain clean-handed -- a paragon, an icon, removed from all the nastiness of real politics. But if we wait until battles can be won on those terms, we'll likely wait a long time.

In one pivotal scene, Lincoln points out that compasses are great for pointing towards "True North". But they're not so great at indicating the crevices and morasses that might lie between the owner of the compass and the goal to which his/her instrument is pointing: "If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing True North?"

If this movie helps just a few more people to grasp this truth, then it will have served a worthy purpose.