Lincoln & Obama

I was consumed in a convulsive shock when it was suggested a few weeks ago that President-Elect Obama is not a contemporary Lincoln. But now that I have gotten over it and my heart-rate has normalized I have been given pause to reflect. After due deliberation, I must accede that this may be the case. Maybe.

All sarcasm aside, of course the President-Elect does not drink at the same bar as Lincoln. One of their similarities – both took hold of the public spotlight in acclaimed speeches – illustrates this. Obama's keynote at the 2004 DNC and Lincoln's Cooper Union address reflect their disparate perspectives, temperaments, and depth of thought.

Then-St. Sen. Obama's keynote was short and platitudinous, uplifting but innocuous. He mostly avoided the specific issues relevant to the election and bemoaned the abstract problem of division and bitterness. He warned against unnamed, nefarious operators "who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.'" He declared that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America." The election wasn't about Iraq, the War on Terror, tax cuts, jobs, immigration or what have you, but whether "we participate in a politics of cynicism or…in a politics of hope."

Since complaining about partisanship is (ironically) about the only thing Americans can join hands in on a bi-partisan basis, the speech was an exercise in snatching the lowest-hanging fruit. Obama was able to endear himself to the base with uplifting vapor delivered in a sonorous voice without offending anyone else, which can always be accomplished when you never really say anything. Memorable was the presentation, not the content, such as there was.

Lincoln's at Cooper Union was a substantive and extended exposition on the Constitution's meaning on the dominant issue before his country – the expansion of slavery into the western territories. He prefaced his discourse with the perfectly scholarly question, "Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?" From that he entered a long examination discussing every instance in which the Congress had dealt with slavery in the territories. He cited the actions of the thirty-nine signers of the Constitution, twenty-three of which voted on the issue in the Confederacy and/or Constitutional Congresses. He concluded

that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one - a clear majority of the whole - certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding.

Quite distinct from Obama's tack, Lincoln did not speak of anonymous forces but addressed his critics by name – Southern Democrats – and exhorted them to take him and Republicans up in a reasoned debate. He mentioned each of their accusations and answered them; that Republicans were revolutionary, that they were enflaming the slavery issue, and that they promoted insurrection among the slaves. Then he used the historical evidence from the first half of his speech to make the case that it was his antagonists who were trying to bend the Constitution to their will, not the Republicans. Their "purpose…plainly stated, is that [they] will destroy the Government, unless [they are] allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as [they] please, on all points in dispute between [them] and us. [They] will rule or ruin in all events."

Lincoln certainly didn't waste time urging Northerners and Southerners – Republicans and Democrats – to put aside their differences and unify. Far from it:

Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man.

Instead he exhorted his audience to "have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

At Cooper Union Lincoln used a deep understanding of history to answer a very specific question, demonstrating a profound degree of thought and awareness. He wasn't picking fruit from his knees but took on an issue that divided the country until it bled.

In the four years that elapsed between his keynote and election the President-Elect hasn't done the same. It is quite clear that he still does not know his own mind, either flipping positions or being conspicuously vague on the FISA bill, meeting with dictators, plans for Iraq, tax cuts, etc.

In the years before the White House Lincoln dedicated himself to considering and debating the issues of his age. President-Elect Obama used the same period to advance himself by focusing on himself, running a campaign based on personality, not issues or ideas.

Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln.