Barack Obama and I went to see "Thurgood" at the Kennedy Center over the weekend.
We didn't exactly go together. In fact we didn't even go on the same night (he went Friday, I went Saturday). But if we had anything like the same experience, the president emerged inspired and emboldened.
Then again, considering the timing, and his recent choice of Supreme Court nominee, maybe he emerged abashed.
"Thurgood" is the extraordinary one-man show in which actor Laurence Fishburne completely transforms himself into Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights hero who became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
Fishburne's Thurgood is a compelling, funny, ferociously independent-minded man, and as George Stevens Jr.'s electrifying script reveals, his most dramatic moments actually came before he donned judicial robes, during his 25 years as a lawyer for the NAACP bravely using the law as a weapon to end legal segregation in this country.
His most celebrated victory was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court declared an end to the "separate but equal" system of racial segregation in public schools.
Watching Marshall's life unfold is exhilarating -- a moving testament to one principled man's ability to change a whole society for the better. And watching it on Saturday night, I couldn't help but feel like the night before, Fishburne must have been directing his performance to one member of the audience in particular.
The real message of "Thurgood" is a celebration of courage -- Marshall's, mostly, but also LBJ's, for nominating such a controversial figure to the bench and then twisting the requisite arms in the Senate to get him confirmed.
And that's where it gets a bit double-edged. Because the play reminds us that there was a time when courage was not necessarily disqualifying from public service.
Marshall, in his time, was a radical -- and I gather there was some talk of his drinking and carousing, too, for good measure. But Johnson picked him and stuck by him.
By contrast, rather than nominate a modern-day radical -- say, an outspoken gay rights activist -- or even someone dramatically on the left side of the legal spectrum, Obama recently picked Elena Kagan, whose most significant qualification appears to have been that she successfully avoided doing anything the least bit controversial -- or courageous -- over the course of her long legal career.
Sure, the civil rights battles aren't as big as they were anymore (thank goodness) but there's still a lot to be courageous about.
Maybe next time -- assuming he gets a next time -- Obama will be bolder. God knows Republican presidents aren't bashful about who they nominate. Indeed, the one downside to seeing "Thurgood" is that it makes the first President Bush's decision to replace him with right-wing puppet Clarence Thomas feel like a fresh wound.
I wonder what Obama took away from his night at the theater. I know he must have been impressed by Fishburne's tour-de-force performance, if nothing else. Maybe he could take a lesson there: Even if you're not Thurgood Marshall, act like you are.
*************************
Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.