Thirteen Sixteenths Divided By Zero

The Pres. thinks that emulating Abe Lincoln is a good idea. Way to go out a limb there. Really? You’re thinking that Millard Fillmore isn’t the best role model for a President? Gosh darn it, but that Harvard education was so worth it!

Here’s the thing Mr. President, it’s pretty easy to pull out this part of Lincoln’s legacy for praise:

Lincoln “could have sought revenge,” Obama said, but he insisted that no Confederate troops be punished.

“All Lincoln wanted was for Confederate troops to go back home and return to work on their farms and in their shops,” Obama said. “That was the only way, Lincoln knew, to repair the rifts that had torn this country apart. It was the only way to begin the healing that our nation so desperately needed.”

And we get the point. We Republicans are supposed to be nicer. If we were nicer, went quietly back to our homes and shops, and stopped having these stupid ideals and principles and stuff, you could forgive us and we’d all get along and – voila! – you would be as great a President as Lincoln. The great unifier! Hoo-ray!

But here’s the thing Mr. President, Lincoln’s conduct at the end of the war was not what made him great. It made him American. We are  gracious in victory. Andrew Johnson tried as hard as anyone to forgive and forget, but the nation wasn’t ready for it, no more than it would have been if Lincoln had lived. Wilson tried to soften Versailles. Truman championed the Marshall Plan. When we win, which we generally do, we know how to be generous to those who were once our enemies. That’s America. You should have figured that out.

No Mr. President, it wasn’t Lincoln’s ability to forgive that made him great, nor was it his ability to unify. In fact, for the vast majority of his Presidency he was as divisive a figure as has ever been seen in America. The opposition party hated him and thought he was a buffoon. A good portion of his own party agreed with that assessment. They didn’t have Gallup in those days, but if they did I can’t imagine that Lincoln’s approval rating would have been much over 30% for the vast majority of the war.

What made the man great was that he was a man of principle, and that principle was “union”. It is difficult to rally a nation around a philosophical construct, but Lincoln could see – as few others did – that if the minority were allowed to take their ball and go home whenever they wanted to, then democracy would indeed perish from this earth. And he knew, as few others understood, that without democracy the future of this nation – indeed of the world – would be dark indeed.

He had blood on his hands. Not thousands of casualties, but hundreds of thousands of casualties. As the toll grew, the call to stop the bloodshed became almost overwhelming. The cries of “mismanagement!” and “violations of our constitutional rights!” grew more and more shrill. And he persisted, for this singular cause – without regard to his reputation, his feelings or his friends. He sacrificed everything he had, in the end even his life, for a principle.

One hundred and forty years later, it is easy to look back at this martyred hero and know that he had been right. At the time, most people would have preferred Millard Fillmore. Being great is not amount unifying anybody  Mr. President. It’s about having a direction. It’s about being willing to fight for things that matter, your legacy be damned. It’s about being willing to ignore the cat-calls and jibes and barbs that go along with the office and pressing on, regardless.

Quite frankly Mr. President, that sounds a hell of a lot more like the President we just had, rather than the one we have now.

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