The Obama-Lincoln connection
The former director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum said Wednesday he has been asked many times, “What can President-elect Barack Obama learn from Lincoln.” Richard Norton Smith said the question should continue, “What has Obama already learned from Lincoln?”
Smith was director of the Lincoln library and museum until 2006. Now he is writing a biography of Nelson Rockefeller, scheduled to be published in 2012.
Smith was in Galesburg, leading a tour of about 30 people from across the nation, to see the school’s “Looking for Lincoln” exhibit and hear a presentation by Doug Wilson, co-director with Rodney Davis of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox.
The nationally known historian discussed the president elect in a conference room while Wilson spoke in the Alumni Room of Old Main. There has been much discussion of similarities between Obama and Lincoln. Smith was asked if Obama brought to mind any other president during the just-concluded campaign, but he clearly feels Lincoln, the 16th president, and Obama, who will be the 44th, have much in common and that is what he wanted to discuss.
A lack of anger
Smith said historians use precedents, but ... “There are times we find ourselves in uncharted waters and this is one of them.”
Neither man had a lot of political experience when he ran for the nation’s highest office. What made Lincoln great, he said, was “his capacity for growth, personally, professional and morally. I think Lincoln never stopped growing. That’s what makes him unique.”
Smith said Obama already has learned, at least in part from Lincoln’s example, the importance of conveying his message and looking ahead.
“I think it’s not only his great skill as a communicator,” Smith said of Obama. “He could have run an angry campaign. He did the complete opposite. The campaign was positive; it certainly was inclusive.”
Smith said both men are unifiers, not dividers.
“I think clearly that is a Lincolnesque trait,” he said. “He (Obama) had the self-discipline to resist (negativity.) He realized if he won, he would have to govern.”
No red and blue, just the United States
Many Democrats feel that 2000 vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, now an Independent but part of the Democrats’ caucus, should be punished or publicly embarrassed for supporting John McCain.
“The word is that the Obama campaign, from the president-elect himself, feels that should not happen. I think that gives credence that he wants to move beyond the red state, blue state model,” Smith said.
Obama is not facing a Civil War, but Smith said, “he confronts some hugely difficult issues. ... I think that’s where this election broke that model. The story of this election was that to change the electoral model, he had to change the electorate.”
Registering young people, Latinos, African Americans and others who have not always turned out in great numbers helped Obama win North Carolina, Indiana and Virginia, which may portend an end to the red state, blue state electorate.
“That’s a huge, historic development,” Smith said. “It holds out an opportunity that just like Roosevelt in the ’30s and Reagan in the ’80s, Obama could be a unifying force.
“In some ways, his greatest challenge is the exact opposite of Lincoln’s,” Smith said, citing “unrealistic” expectations about what Obama can do — quickly — about race relations, the economy and the war.
“People have high hopes. That’s a very good sign. It means the country is ready to rally around this guy and somehow the citizens realize history is being made,” Smith said.
On the other hand, expectations for Lincoln were low. Smith said the American people displayed great patience “for a war that seemed endless.”
He’s not sure that kind of patience lives on in a 24/7 news cycle world. He said if the Civil War were televised, “the sheer horror and seeming incompetence” of some Northern leaders would have caused patience to wear thin.
“People forget Lincoln was viewed for much of his presidency — by Northerners — as a bumbler,” he said.
A TV Civil War probably would have ended sooner, which could have led to victory for the Confederacy, which was worn down as the war dragged on, he said.
Smith believes Obama will have a chance to make a mark almost at once. Not surprisingly, it comes back to Lincoln.
“Think of the symbolism,” Smith said. “There will be powerful symbolism on January 20th” when Obama is inaugurated. “Three weeks later, the nation’s first African-American president will be leading the nation in the celebration of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. It doesn’t get much more powerful than that.”