Can Lincoln's playbook help Obama in the years ahead? "Comparisons are eerily similar."

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: Can Lincoln's playbook help Obama in the years ahead?
By Ed Hornick


Barack Obama and Joe Biden attend a rally in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The comparisons are eerily similar.

Both Abraham Lincoln and President-elect Barack Obama were not from Illinois but became two of the state's top politicians.

They were both criticized for being too inexperienced to become president of the United States.

Both were raised by women other than their mothers (Lincoln by his stepmother and Obama by his grandmother) and later visited the women before their respective inaugurations. Both women died before the respective inauguration days.

Lincoln, a Republican, and Obama, a Democrat, will be noted as relatively young presidents: Lincoln was 51 when he took office. Obama will be 47.

The two tall and lanky politicians also wrote best-selling books before becoming president.

But as the Obama transition team continues to assemble the new administration, the question remains: Can the president-elect help heal a sharply divided nation by using a page out of Lincoln's political playbook?

Historians and political pundits have pointed out that both Lincoln and Obama share the gift of eloquence, speechwriting and oration. Lincoln historian and author Ronald White said that both had a "tremendous trust in words and the power of language."...White, author of the upcoming book "A. Lincoln: A Biography," has lectured on Lincoln at the White House and the Library of Congress. "Both of them rose, in a sense, beyond their inexperience and in spite of their relative youth, on the wings of their ability to use public language," he added.

For Obama, dealing with a country deeply divided along partisan lines and a massive economic downturn, Lincoln could provide a compelling model on how to change the country's fortunes. After all, Lincoln, the 16th president, helped save the union during the Civil War and later emancipated the slaves....

***

But Columbia University history professor Eric Foner, also a Lincoln scholar, said people should take a step back from the comparisons. "Lincoln is a great man, and people should learn from him. But I think, as a historian, people ought to calm down a little about these comparisons," he said. "They are entirely different situations, worlds, political systems. There aren't I think a lot of exact direct lessons one can or should necessarily try to learn from Lincoln."...

But don't tell that to Obama.

In a recent CBS interview, Obama said he's been spending a lot of time reading up on Lincoln, a further sign that he may try to channel the former president's successes. Obama said he was reading presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 book "Team of Rivals," which focuses on Lincoln's Cabinet. "There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful," he told "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft....

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/18/obama.lincoln/index.html

[NMDemDist2]

1. I am uncomfortable with these analogies too

Lincoln came to a bad end :scared:

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I don't like going there either. nt

[Ganja Ninja]

3. Lincoln was not all that successful as a president.

We had a civil war during his presidency fer christsakes! Lincoln failed miserably during the first few years of that conflict. He was undermined by the rivals in his cabinet. He had to fire and fire again until he finally found people that would get things done and not ignore him or stab him in the back.

FDR would be a much better example to follow than Lincoln.

[Two Americas]

6. not true

No one conspired behind Lincoln's back more than Salmon Chase did, but Chase was very competent and successful as the Treasury Secretary, and was not fired but was named to the Supreme Court. Welles was notably successful heading the Navy, Stanton was exceptionally competent and completely loyal to Lincoln, as was Seward. Bates and Blair were loyal and competent.

Lincoln never fired a cabinet member.

It was not Lincoln who failed in the first two years of the war, it was the politicized and cautious leadership in the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln did need to "fire and fire again" generals until he found loyal ones who would fight, most significantly Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan.

The Confederates started the war, and there was probably no way to avoid it without caving in to, catering to and compromising with the slavery power.

[truedelphi]

8. Your words echo my deepest thoughts on this matter.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest extravaganzas that any country anywhere experienced.

Hitler told His architect Speers that he would model his treatment of the Jewish people on how our country treated the Native Americans - and if it had not been for the blood thirst that the Civil War created inside of those young men who fought it, perhaps we would not have been so treachorous and barbaric of the NAtive Americans.

I hope that Obama gets off his high horse on Lincoln and starts realizing that a new "New Deal"

Probably won't happen. Obama has Clintonistas everywhere in his chosen appointments, and those NAFTA supporting types are not about to help revive the middle class.

[Two Americas]

4. there is no comparison

It is unfortunate to see so much misinformation about Lincoln being disseminated. As just one example, what was the "best-selling book" that Lincoln supposedly wrote before becoming president? I don't know of any such "best selling book."

One could make a longer list of the differences between Obama and Lincoln than these lists of similarities. Again, one example: Lincoln had almost no formal education.

But more importantly, Lincoln's goals and political positions are being distorted and mis-represented. Lincoln did not try to "heal a sharply divided nation." That had been tried, by the Whigs and by the Buchanan administration, and that approach had failed.

Quite to the contrary, Lincoln thought that the two sides were not reconcilable, that a crisis was inevitable.

Here is an excerpt from his "House Divided" speech.

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South."

http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/divided.htm

Nor did Lincoln try to bring the two sides together, or reach out to pro-slavery politicians. Again, quite to the contrary he called for the opposite, saying that we needed to work with our friends and stop trying to work with our enemies.

"Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends -- those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work -- who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now? --now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail -- if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come."

Notice the phrase "the single impulse of resistance to a common danger." This is important, because people are misapplying the "team of rivals" concept.

Yes, Lincoln brought people into his cabinet who had been rivals for the nomination of his own party - Seward, Bates and Chase - and people from the other party - Welles, Blair and Stanton - but they were all anti-slavery. They were all part of the resistance to a common danger - the growth of the slavery power. Lincoln did not start with a devotion to "post-partisanship" or unity, but rather with a firm and unwavering commitment to principle.

What is the common danger today? Most people in the general public see that there is in fact a common danger, that we do in fact have a house divided today. The divide in the 1850's, in Lincoln's view, was between Free Labor and tyranny, between liberty and slavery. He saw the fight for Abolition as related to striking workers in New England and as related to the eternal struggle between Capital and Labor.

Here are excerpts from Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress. First, he makes the connection between slavery and the exploitation of Labor:

"It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed..."

Then he declares his position about Labor and Capital:

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29502

This excerpt from the seventh Lincoln-Douglas debate makes clear how Lincoln connected the fight against slavery to the battle of Labor against Capital.

"It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

Today, the average person sees a variation on the same divide, and the recent landslide of support for the Democratic party was informed and motivated by that. People know that the divide is between the haves and the have-nots, and that corporate domination of our government and our lives is the "common danger" and that responding to that would lead to unity and common cause.

Taking Lincoln's lead, and following his example, could we not paraphrase his words to day and apply a more universal framework, a framework around which we could rally, we could bring unity of purpose founded solidly on principles and ideals?

"I believe this government cannot endure permanently half corporate and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of corporate domination will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward.."

The way that people are describing Lincoln's positions and actions through this latest "team of rivals" analysis bears more resemblance to the Buchanan administration, or to the efforts of Stephen Douglas than they do to Lincoln - advocacy to transcend the divide, heal the nation, work with the opposition, avoid a crisis, move beyond the politics of the past. All of that is the opposite of what Lincoln stood for and did.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Thanks for this thoughtful and informative post! nt

[Two Americas]

7. the difference is stark

Lincoln held fast to principle, no matter how politically risky and to the point that he was often alone in his stance.

People are using the "team of rivals" concept to advocate the opposite: holding fast to bi-partisanship and unity no matter how much compromise on principle that requires.

Those two approaches are exact opposites.