Vigor was the byword of the Kennedy years. After the wrinkled decorum of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy's America would feature people like him, the kind whose hair waved in the wind as they scrimmaged on the lawn at Hyannis Port, Mass. But for more than a decade now, as biographers have burrowed under the New Frontier, another J.F.K. has come into the picture. That would be the one with a multitude ...

He looks like President Barack Obama, speaks like him, and even gestures like him, but he is not exactly the president of the United States. This president is an audio-animatronic Obama surrounded by the 42 other U.S. presidents at Walt Disney World's newly revamped Hall of Presidents in Orlando, Florida. Disney gathered a team of what it calls "Imagineers," each trained in various disciplines such as artistry, design and engineering, to update the attraction that has been around since 1971. ...