In a 24-hour internet-fueled news cycle, political campaign reporters often seem to focus on what just happened and only what just happened. But presidential candidates profess to take a broader view: they consciously link their criticisms and promises to the influential figures and debates of the past.
In a new series, the morning edition will take a fresh look at American political history, beginning with the figure that loomed over the 2008 and 2012 campaign: that tall, well-spoken senator from illinois, often hailed for his importance in the history of American race relations. no, not president obama. we’re talking about abraham lincoln.
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President Obama and presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have presented their own narratives of Lincoln’s life, tailored to their own political purposes. But his versions of Lincoln are just drops in a veritable ocean of books—nearly 15,000, to be precise—that rehearse Lincoln’s legacy.
Where should a reader begin? Perhaps the best-known biography is Lincoln, by the late historian David Herbert Donald. Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University and author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, recommends Donald’s book as the best one-volume account of Lincoln’s life.
“[donald] avoided both traps people fall into. one is just hagiography: you know, [lincoln] was born with a pen in hand ready to sign the emancipation proclamation; and the other is the opposite , of course, [he was] just a racist or didn’t really care about slavery at all. donald sails between them,” says foner.
above points out, however, that the book is not without its flaws, in particular that Donald Lincoln’s portrayal of it may have been influenced by current events in the mid-1990s, particularly by President Clinton.
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“[donald] sees lincoln as a person without deep convictions,” says foner. “I think he saw Lincoln as a figure of Clinton, buffeted by events, not knowing what he represented. I don’t think he’s a very persuasive image of Lincoln.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian and author of Team Rivals: Abraham Lincoln’s Political Genius, recommends a book that shows how Lincoln prevailed under pressure during the Civil War: Liberty’s Battlecry by James McPherson.
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“He’s a narrative genius, mcpherson… what he’s done is mix the battles, lincoln’s leadership, the home front, the finances, the cabinet, all together, but it goes like a story, and you don’t knows until finally, maybe, atlanta, if the north is really going to win this war,” says goodwin.
Lincoln’s strategically brilliant decisions were gambles at the time, she says.
“We know the ending: We know he was martyred, we know the war was won. But the people living then certainly didn’t know it, and I think that’s what the McPherson beat allows us to see,” Goodwin says.
but lincoln’s political personality is only one dimension of the man. Andy Ferguson, senior editor of the Standard Weekly and author of Land of Lincoln, recommends an out-of-print book, Following in the footsteps of the Lincolns. The book’s author, Ida Tarbell, the iconic gossip journalist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exposes Lincoln’s roots in Midwestern frontier culture.
ferguson says that tarbell was obsessed with lincoln all her life. “After World War I, she went and fulfilled a part of her obsession that she had always wanted, which was to track Lincoln’s movements with his family from when he was a little boy, from Kentucky to Indiana to Illinois. And as she did this, there were still people alive who knew the lincolns. it’s a part of time that we can’t really access any other way,” says ferguson.
back in the days when lincoln was growing up, kentucky, indiana and illinois were remote areas struggling to develop. “It was just a couple of steps above the Bronze Age, really,” says Ferguson.
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But instead of embracing his humble past, Foner says, Lincoln distanced himself from frontier culture.
“he doesn’t like to hunt, he’s not violent, he doesn’t hate Indians, he doesn’t drink. and he understands very quickly—and where this comes from, who knows—that the way to get ahead is through your mind, not Just through hard physical labor, which is what his father does. [Lincoln] gets as far away from the border as he can, pretty early,” Foner says.
Whenever today’s political candidates use the lincoln name for their own purposes, there are certain aspects of lincoln that today’s candidates will not adopt. For example, Foner says he’d love to see a political candidate from any party say outright, “I’ve changed my mind,” because that’s what Lincoln did over and over again during the Civil War.
“Lincoln was a flip-flopper, if you want to use modern political terminology. We don’t seem to allow our politicians to do that anymore,” Foner says.
Ferguson says that even when politicians change their minds, political speechwriters have the task of making it appear that the politician’s views have remained constant.
goodwin adds that he would like to see politicians emulate lincoln’s sense of humor. she tells a story about a time when lincoln was accused of having two faces, and he replied, “if i had two faces, do you think i would use this face?”
“that ability to laugh at yourself, to look at yourself from the outside in, means a certain kind of confidence: it means taking the world seriously, but not taking yourself so seriously at all times. It’s so rare in our campaigns,” says goodwin.
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