Harsher in Hindsight: The motivating event for Scott's coup attempt is that President Lyman has just signed a treaty with the Soviets abolishing both nations' nuclear arsenals, the act provoking fury among some sectors of the American public due to suspicions that the Soviets would cheat. In 1987, as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were deep in negotiations over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the two began talking about going farther, and abolishing all their nuclear weapons, with both Reagan and Gorbachev in favor of the move. However, both of them were savvy enough to know that full abolition would be an impossible sell in either nation, as hardliners in both countries would suspect trickery from the other and would work to block or derail any such treaty.
One-Scene Wonder: John Houseman as one of the coup-plotters. It was his first appearance before the camera after years of working on the production side of the business.
Values Dissonance: To a cynical modern audience, the President's refusal to use letters from his mistress to blackmail General Scott into aborting the coup to keep his own hands and conscience clean looks dangerously irresponsible, especially when the stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. For that matter, the idea that a right-wing authoritarian's followers would abandon him in the face of a personal scandal at odds with traditional morality seems almost laughable in the aftermath of decades of right-wing politicians holding onto power and influence despite even juicier and more repulsive sexual improprieties, thanks to a base too animated by their hatred of other political sectors and identities to care whether or not their own leaders adhere to the standards they want imposed on others.
