Movie Night is a rare event on Capitol Hill, so when Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell took a break from fiscal cliff brinksmanship to host a Dec. 19 screening of Lincoln, it was a given that they would serve politics with the popcorn.

Lincoln is an important story well told. Daniel Day-Lewis' impersonation of Lincoln is spot on, right down to the great man's high-pitched voice, lumbering gait and profound melancholy. To watch that film is to walk into the White House in January 1865.

Unlike Lincoln, we cannot ignore Frederick Douglass' critique in the current conversation over equality, or lack thereof, of opportunity, access and mobility in this country.

Lincoln is a classic that will stand the test of time. It will be a monument to the talents of Spielberg, Kushner, Day-Lewis and Field. Though it won't appeal to all, it will appeal to the ages.

Based on a portion of Team of Rivals, by presidential historian Doris Kerns Goodwin, the movie is a well-documented telling of the passage of the 13th Amendment. It wasn't pretty!

Lincoln may be what America needs right now to remind us what politics, for all its messy, dispiriting ugliness, can and should be about -- doing the right, moral thing to better us all.

Don't know much about history -- but you don't have to in order to be captivated by Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.