The Lincoln/Obama Comparisons: Real Or Hyperbole?

(Lincoln taking the oath at his second inauguration,
March 4, 1865, Harper's Weekly, 1865)

I recently interviewed Ron White, the author of "A. Lincoln: A Biography," published in January 2009 by Random House, to learn more about the true parallels between the 16th American president and Pres.-elect Barack Obama.

Q: Many comparisons have been made between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. From their long, lanky physiques to their Illinois roots to their lawyer backgrounds to the great, sweeping challenges Lincoln faced and Obama will tackle in the near future. As Obama assembles a ‘Team of Rivals’ Cabinet modeled on Lincoln’s advisers, which of these many linkages are valid? And are there other connections between the two men that you see that we in the media might be missing?

A: The focus on Barack Obama’s intention to appoint a “Team of Rivals” is valid in so far as it lifts up Obama’s desire to emulate the political spirit of Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln, it appears, went even further. In his first cabinet he appointed four former Democrats.

Apart from the “Team of Rivals,” the press has largely focused on Obama’s invocation of Lincoln’s words. Many recent politicians have quoted Lincoln in campaign speeches. In reading Obama's "The Audacity of Hope," however, published in 2006, I am struck by how deeply Obama has immersed himself in Lincoln’s ideas. In discussing the Constitution, Obama says, “I’m left then with Lincoln, who like no man before or since understood both the deliberative function of our democracy and the limits of such deliberation.”

What has not been mentioned in the many comparisons of the men are the ways, much as Lincoln did, that Obama understands the relationship between politics and religion. Lincoln, who never joined a church, offered in his Second Inaugural Address a most profound statement on the activity of God and the role of faith in American life: “The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Likewise, Obama, in his chapter on faith in "The Audacity of Hope, challenges his fellow Democrats: “I think Democrats are wrong to run away from a debate about values.” If the Bill of Rights codifies the separation of church and state, Obama affirms that America, “as a religious people,” has never divided politics and religion. He couples the story of his own journey from skepticism to “embrace the Christian faith” with his admonition “to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people.”

Q: How has Obama included Lincoln – overtly or not – in his most seminal speeches of the campaign?

A: At the beginning and at the end of his presidential campaign, Obama invoked Lincoln. He began his presidential campaign on February 10, 2007, “in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together.” Obama went on to say that it was time for this generation of Americans to change the country they love because, “That’s what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and words, he moved a nation and helped free a people."

On November 4, 2008, Obama concluded his campaign with an eloquent speech that again invoked Lincoln:

“As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, ‘We are not enemies, but friends—though passion may have strained it must not break our affections.'”

Q: What do we know about how Lincoln prepared his inaugural addresses?

A: We know much more about the preparation of the First Inaugural Address. It is often not appreciated how much Lincoln edited and revised. In this case he showed the speech to several close friends -- and one new colleague who was not yet a friend: William Seward, his chief rival for the Republican nomination, and his new Secretary of State. Lincoln was surely surprised when Seward responded with six pages of suggestions. He told Lincoln to forget his last paragraph, and consider two paragraphs he included. Lincoln chose one of Seward’s options.

Our most eloquent President demonstrated his brilliance by editing Seward’s words to make them his own. We know one of Lincoln's most memorable paragraphs, which he revised to read like poetry, included the phrases “the mystic chords of memory” and “the better angels of our nature.”

Q: What instruction might Obama take from Lincoln’s two inaugural speeches, and would one of Lincoln’s inaugural addresses over the other provide more appropriate guidance for modern times?

A: Some of the instruction Obama has already learned. Write prose poetry and not political agendas. Invoke the best of America’s past. Show don't tell—Obama is very good at showing the stories of ordinary people he has met in his campaign. I like to say Lincoln disappeared in his two finest speeches—the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I mean that he used not one personal pronoun at Gettysburg and only two in the Second Inaugural. Lincoln did away with the “I” word. He pointed beyond himself to hopes and dreams that all Americans could embrace.

Q: Lincoln’s greatest challenge was, of course, slavery, a domestic woe that divided the nation. When Obama speaks Jan. 20 from the steps of the Capitol, his worries will span a global community – the war on terror, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an international economy in crisis. His inaugural address will reach the world in an instant. How were Lincoln’s speeches – perhaps particularly his second address – received by other countries?

A: During the early part of his presidency, Lincoln was portrayed as an unlearned country lawyer. In Europe and Great Britain, perhaps envious of upstart America, notables put down Lincoln as a product of a rude American culture. The Times of London wrote of Gettysburg, “The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of the poor President Lincoln.”

Foreign reaction changed with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The Saturday Review began by contrasting Lincoln, regarded as weak, with the usual posture it had come to expect from its American cousin. “If it had been composed by any other prominent American politician, it would have been boastful, confident, and menacing.” The London Spectator opined that Lincoln “seems destined to be one of those ‘foolish things of the world’ which are destined to confound the wise, one of those weak things which shall ‘confound the things which are mighty.”

From France, John Bigelow wrote from the United States Legation in Paris, “The President’s inaugural has enjoyed a rare distinction for an American state paper of being correctly translated and almost universally copied here.” Bigelow offered his opinion as to why the address was so well-received. Its success was “less due to its brevity than to its almost inspired simplicity and Christian dignity.”

Ronald C. White Jr. is the author of "Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural and The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words." His new book, "A. Lincoln: A Biography," will be published in January 2009 by Random House.

(JENNIFER SKALKA)