Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln

I found this at the Library of Congress Website. There are several different versions of the Gettysburg Address; this is the version that is inscribed at the Lincoln Memorial. Today is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

Obama on Lincoln

President Obama today, remembering Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth.




I particularly like the anecdote at the end about how Lincoln, near the end of the Civil War, did not allow any Confederate soldiers to be punished. He wanted them to go home, and become citizens again. Which, in retrospect, was probably as important to saving the nation as actually winning the war.

One of my favorite Lincoln anecdotes is along the same lines. After the war, some Southerners came to the White House. Lincoln met them and was very friendly, and charmed them. His advisors didn't like this approach; how could Lincoln be so gracious to people who so recently had been his enemies? Lincoln replied that by befriending his enemies, he both lost enemies and gained friends.

The political period we are in now has, of course, echoes of the Civil War. An African-American is president; the South is largely one party, while most of the rest of the country is another. Andrew Sullivan thinks that the GOP has "declared war" on Obama. Sullivan, who should know conservatives, is surprised at the ferocity of the response to Obama.

I'm not. This does not surprise me in the least. But I am glad that Obama takes so much inspiration from Lincoln, because I think his conciliatory attitude is needed. The GOP is fighting Obama so intensely for one reason: they know they have already lost. They have lost the culture war on many fronts; civil rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion. They are losing the ideological argument.

The Republicans are simply terrified that they will be humiliated. That is, they are terrified that they will be more humiliated than they already have been by McCain's loss. At some point the anger will burn out, and they will concede. Obama's graciousness, his willingness to work with them, will come in very handy when that happens. But until then, the best that liberals, progressives, and Democrats can do is remember that, before Lincoln became an icon, a legend, a symbol of American democracy at its finest, he had to fight a war. And he had to win it.

Takedown in Illinois

What is it about Illinois politicians? Among them are the best (Obama, Lincoln, Paul Simon) and the worst. A month ago we elevated one of the best to the Presidency. Today we saw the arrest of one of the worst, the governor.

Talking Points Memo has the video of Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference:



What is it with this guy? How stupid can you possibly get? He knew he was under investigation. Josh Marshall thinks he might try an unusual defense:

I think Blagojevich's best defense is probably going to be an insanity defense based on the evidence of his idea that he was setting himself up to run for president by appointing himself to serve out Obama's senate term.

Yes, I would describe that as insane. Clinically off the deep end. Talking Points Memo, btw, has completely comprehensive coverage of this story. They are absolutely all over it. This is a great example of how blogs can do a better job on some things than even the best newspapers. This from The Daily Beast (via TPM) is priceless: a comparison of quotes from Rod Blagojevich vs. Tony Soprano. I honestly could not tell the difference.

But back to the analysis. We have known for a very long time that this kind of thing went on in Chicago. I've advised people to treat data on their computers like voting in Chicago: "Save early and save often, like vote early and vote often." Morris Udall wanted to be buried in Chicago so he could politically active when he was dead. We have suspected for a while that something nasty was going on with this particular governor. But some people have managed to come out of Chicago politics looking good, like Obama. According to the NYTimes,

Throughout his career, Mr. Obama has adroitly straddled the state’s bruising politics, forming alliances with some old-style politicians even as he pressed for ethics reform. But Mr. Obama had long been estranged from the governor

So how did Obama come out of Chicago politics with his integrity intact, while this guy set new standards for sleaze? Obviously keeping his distance from this slimeball was a big help.

I think it's a case of old-school politics being slow to die. There will always be people like this in the world. Always. But we are more aware, much more aware, of how individual politicians operate these days than we were in the past. So it's harder for them to get away with this. Which, you would think, would mean that they would stop doing it. Apparently not. Maybe Blagojevich grew up under the influence of people who DID get away with it way back when, and he just didn't understand how much times have changed. That's my best shot at an explanation. Obama, of course, is new-school politics.

It takes a healthy ego to run for office, particularly one as powerful as governor. Fortunately, the fact that there is always competition in politics usually introduces a dose of humility in a politician's psyche. If you stay in politics long enough, i.e. at least one term in a high-profile office, you are going to be wrong, and you are going to be wrong in public. And your opponents are going to be right. That's not because you, whoever you are, are stupid. It's because you are human, and you will make mistakes. So if you want to stay around, you have to be able to realize it when you are wrong, you have to admit it, and you have to be able to change. Otherwise you might end up like Ted Stevens. Or Rod Blagojevich.

Good politicians understand the necessity of balancing that healthy ego and the humility that comes from healthy competition. But it's also easy for someone to not balance those all that well, or to pretend to balance them. At which point they sometimes make headlines. Like today.

A great man from Illinois once said that you can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Apparently the current governor did not learn the lesson from Mr. Lincoln.

The great thing about democracy is that politicians can be held accountable. The bad thing about democracy is that occasionally holding politicians accountable is a very painful process.

There are thousands of elected officials at all levels in this country. If we are to enjoy the possibility that our politicians will be great leaders, we must be willing to accept the possibility that some of them will be crooks and slimeballs. I am thankful that there are always far more of the good ones than the truly bad ones. I am also thankful that our system allows us to take those lessons we learn from days like today and pass laws that cement these lessons into our system so that, slowly but surely, we build a better system.

Conservatives and Obama

There's a meme floating around that Obama is nothing but a great talker. He gives great speeches, but how much content is there? I see the word "vague" attached to him. This is particularly true of conservatives. A conservative film blog that some friends of mine run, Libertas, had a post about this.

I think this is great. Why? Because they are underestimating him. Conservatives are making the same mistake about Obama that liberals made about Reagan. For years, I had no idea why people voted for Reagan. The man was a B-movie actor who could barely remember his own name. Why was this man President? I once saw an old clip of him, from the 60's, talking about defending America against communism. It was amazing - he was very articulate and passionate. I realized that he actually had thought about the issues and cared about them very deeply. By the time I heard him, he had his message down pat, and he was an old man, so I never saw the passion that had inspired so many people. But a couple of minutes of black and white footage changed an opinion that I had had for over 20 years.

This is the same mistake that conservatives are making now: they assume that Obama is just the same old liberal, with better speaking ability. What they don't appreciate is that behind the flowery rhetoric is years of thinking. Behind the passion on display is years of walking the streets, working hard, asking questions, debating. Why was Martin Luther King so effective when he said that he had a dream? Because he had it for his whole life. Why could Abraham Lincoln express the sorrow of a nation in a few sentences at Gettyburg? Because what he cared about was holding the country together, which he knew was worthwhile because he had spent so long thinking about it. And because he had spent so long working on it.

So I am happy to see conservatives dismiss Obama as an empty suit. Keep on underestimating him, folks! We'll see you in November.