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Honest Abe and Honest Obe

By Laura S. Washington

Obama has run away from race. That’s why his campaign has stepped gingerly around issues like profiling, urban crime and gun control.
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Abraham Lincoln will rise again.

At least that’s what Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would like you to believe. Since 2005, when he penned an homage to Lincoln for Time magazine, the senator from Illinois has been peddling the notion that he is the rightful heir to the Lincoln legend, as rail splitter, rhetorician extraordinaire, debater and liberator.

In February 2007, when Obama kicked off his historic campaign in Springfield, Ill., he told the throngs he had returned to his Illinois State Senate stomping grounds to stand “in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together.” He continued: “By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. … But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible.”

That tall, gangly and little-known state senator rode his oratory skills and cerebral wisdom to the White House in 1860. Lincoln took the nation’s reins in a singular time of crisis and made history by holding the nation together and forging the Emancipation Proclamation.

The nation is once again in crisis. The slick message: Obama is the new Lincoln.

Obama tried the analogy again last month when he returned to Lincoln Land to launch Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) as his vice presidential pick. Throughout the campaign, he has peppered his talks on the trail with references to Honest Abe.

It has been risky. Obama’s conservative critics slammed his comparisons as “messianic,” full of “conceit” and “egomaniacal.”

Charges of hubris aside, the Obama-Lincoln parallel is a hard sell. Many historians consider Lincoln our greatest president. But when it comes to history, the average American voter has the memory of a goldfish. My friend Studs Terkel calls our nation the “United States of Alzheimer’s.”

It doesn’t help that the Obama has cherry-picked the Lincoln legacy. Lincoln’s greatest act was signing two executive orders — in 1862 and 1863 — to free the slaves. You won’t hear Obama talk as much about that.

For most of his presidential quest, Obama has run away from race. That’s why he couldn’t bring himself to utter the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name during his nomination acceptance speech on Aug. 28 in Denver. That’s why he keeps “race men,” like the Revs. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Al Sharpton, at arm’s length. That’s why his campaign has stepped gingerly around issues like profiling, urban crime, gun control and reparations.

See no black people. Hear no black people. Speak no black people.

So far, it seems to be working.

Nevertheless, Obama should find a way to embrace the Lincoln motif and work it hard, says Richard Norton Smith, the distinguished American historian and founding director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. Obama can dodge the messiah rap, says Smith, now a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University, who regularly opines on presidential history for PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”

“I would distinguish between holding up the Lincoln example as finding inspiration, rather than equating oneself with Lincoln,” Smith says.

In fact, one of Lincoln’s most eloquent moments came during the harrowed debate over slavery. In 1862, during the run-up to the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln sent this message to Congress: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.”

Methinks this is the right “occasion.”

We are mired in a disastrous and un-winnable war. The U.S. economic system may be on the brink of a depression. Mr. Change is claiming to be a new kind of politician who can pull us out of partisan politics to finally deal with the big stuff. Let’s get to it.

“The Lincoln story continues to haunt us to this day,” Smith said, “because of the potential, the possibility of a (new kind of) politics that he brought to the office.”

Can Obama rise to the occasion? 

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Laura S. Washington, an In These Times senior editor, teaches journalism at DePaul University and is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

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  • Reader Comments

    Obama got my vote once, but not this time. He’s obviously bright and very polically savvy, as your article points out. It’s not just what he says and does, but what he does not.

    I resent his blatant pandering to the voters with simple handouts of money. “My tax cut is bigger than his tax cut.” “I’ll give everyone health care, etc.”

    Can you tell me anything Obama did while in the Illinois legisalture (other than advance his own career)?

    Can you point out anything while in the US Senate? Come to think of it, has he ever sat in his chair?

    ————

    I’m currently reading Terkel’s “Hard Times.” Very disturbing similarities to todays mess and perhaps even more disturbing differences.

    We were still largely a nation of farmers then and could at least feed ourselves. Now we’re post manufacturing and have little to offer the world in the way of saleable goods.

    Next time you see him ask if he’s ready for a Hard Times — Volume Two. I have a list of friends and relaties who’ve lost jobs, lost businesses and now are stuck with houses and can’t afford to go where the jobs may be.

    Posted by whattheheck on Oct 28, 2008 at 11:17 PM

    Listen to an excellent radio interview with Webster Tarpley, author of Obama A Post Modern Coup.  It is available for free MP3 download at
    http://drop.io/Summerbird   It is currently the fourth file down from the top of the page.

    Posted by Stargod on Oct 29, 2008 at 11:50 AM

    “That tall, gangly and little-known state senator rode his oratory skills and cerebral wisdom to the White House in 1860.”

    Abraham Lincoln was a much better-known political figure than this statement suggests prior to the 1860 election due to his exposure in national newspapers following the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858.

    “We are mired in a disastrous and un-winnable war.”

    And President Barack Obama is steadily getting us more involved in another “disastrous and unwinnable war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    What Iraq was to the failed presidency of George W. Bush, Afghanistan will be to Barack Obama’s presidency.

    “Mr. Change is claiming to be a new kind of politician who can pull us out of partisan politics to finally deal with the big stuff.”

    President Obama cannot end “partisan politics.” It is part and parcel of our political system, and has been so for two centuries.

    “The U.S. economic system may be on the brink of a depression.”

    We have arrived.

    Posted by patrick hattman on Apr 5, 2009 at 11:39 PM

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Appeared in the November 2008 Issue
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