A third candidate made it to the 2016 presidential debate stage after all, at least for last Sunday night's face-off in St. Louis. Wisely or not, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both managed to summon Abraham Lincoln to their furious dust-up at Washington University. Lincoln's name hasn't been mentioned as often at a major political debate since Stephen A. Douglas pummeled him during their own seven, three-hour-long marathons in 1858 Illinois. Lincoln, who built his political career as a fierce debater, might well have been pleased that both of the 2016 presidential candidates cited him, but surely would have pointed out that only one of them comprehends his legacy. And it is not his "fellow" Republican.
Hillary Clinton called forth the ghost of Lincoln first, after being asked to explain a newly released WikiLeaks transcript of one of her pre-campaign speeches to bankers. Apparently she told that audience that politicians might justifiably deploy one approach publicly, and another privately, in order to achieve important goals. Abraham Lincoln, as she pointed out during last night's debate, had pursued the same approach in pushing the constitutional amendment banning slavery. To make sure Congress approved it before Union armies could force Confederate forces to surrender--a triumph some feared would ease the pressure to destroy the horrific institution that had caused the war in the first place--the agile president moved on several fronts at once.
First, he made sure his party endorsed abolition in its 1864 platform. That alone constituted his public campaign for freedom. Knowing the real fight would be waged among lame duck members of the House of Representatives, he lobbied fiercely, often secretly, offering outgoing Democratic Congressmen life-saving federal jobs in exchange for "aye" votes and perhaps, as some have alleged, allowing money to change hands when absolutely necessary. When the Confederate government unexpectedly dispatched negotiators toward Washington shortly before the scheduled vote to propose an armistice, Lincoln secretly ordered them detained at Fort Monroe, Virginia. The next day he baldly misled the House by reporting, in writing: "So far as I know, there are no peace commissioners in the city, or likely to be in it." Left in the dark about the stranded negotiators, the House resumed deliberations, passed the amendment, and sent it to the states for ratification.
To the public, Lincoln emerged with clean hands. Insiders knew better. But the president believed the ends more than justified the means. Slavery was finally on its way to extinction--"a great moral victory," he told an adoring crowd, "a King's cure for all the evils." Mrs. Clinton had little time to relate this complex story last night. Instead she spoke of Stephen Spielberg's 2012 film, Lincoln, which focused so brilliantly on this neglected episode. (Perhaps it is no coincidence that, as the movie made clear, another hero had played a major role in Lincoln's crusade: an earlier Secretary of State, William H. Seward, once a New York Senator favored to become president, who had been beaten out by an unknown, untested underdog from Illinois, and then accepted the chief Cabinet post from the victor. History really does repeat itself.)
Trump not surprisingly expressed outrage. How dare Mrs. Clinton mention "the late, great Lincoln," as he described him? When she tried to explain the allusion, Trump muttered something like, "You're no Honest Abe."
But while Mrs. Clinton may have expressed her point imperfectly, Trump missed it entirely. It is absolutely "honest" to remind voters that our most accomplished presidents--Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, to name three--used the bully pulpit and political arm-twisting in tandem to achieve momentous results, and that sometimes the messages they conveyed to each audience did not synchronize. Hillary's effort to convince bankers that reform might eventually help expand their markets was an ingenious tactic indeed; maybe even Lincolnian. We still need presidents who can bring resistant communities into the big tent. Predictably, Trump's rejoinder made little sense. Yes, Lincoln was known by the sobriquet "Honest Abe," and used his reputation for truthfulness to advance his political career. But in the rough and tumble of politics, he was as ruthless as the next guy--more so. (Warning to Mr. Trump: Lincoln also introduced the first federal income tax.)
Nor was the St. Louis debate the first time the two candidates have summoned Lincoln into their respective campaigns, and hardly the first time Lincoln has become an issue in a race for the presidency.
Back in 1912, in his third-party campaign for a White House comeback, Theodore Roosevelt repeatedly stressed his fealty to vigorous, Lincolnian executive authority. In response, Republican William Howard Taft journeyed to Vermont to receive the blessing of the Great Emancipator's son, Robert T. Lincoln, by then a Gilded Age tycoon appalled by TR's anti-business populism. Not to be outdone, Democrat Woodrow Wilson hinted that he was the best equipped to carry on Lincoln's legacy of sectional reconciliation. (Warning: such promises often mean little. Once elected, Wilson re-segregated the federal bureaucracy, gave a "Gettysburg Address" at the battle's 50th anniversary without once mentioning slavery or black rights, and lauded the retrograde D. W. Griffith movie, Birth of a Nation.)
In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered himself as the heir to Lincoln's legacy of love for the common man. During his campaign for re-election, FDR accomplished what was then considered a political miracle by convincing African Americans to abandon their generations-long loyalty to the "Party of Lincoln." They have been overwhelmingly Democratic ever since.
Then in 1960, at perhaps the most famous presidential debate of all, the first between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, the young Democrat startled the audience of millions by summoning the revered Republican in his opening statement. Lincoln had said the nation could not endure half slave and half free, Kennedy began. The challenge today was "whether the world will exist half slave and half free."
Perhaps no presidential candidate more overtly identified himself with Lincoln--or had more right to do so--than Barack Obama. Announcing his candidacy from the steps of the Old Illinois Capitol--the very site where Lincoln had delivered the "House Divided Address"--he declared: "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. He tells us that...beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people.... Together, standing today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this earth."
Lincoln's notion of "unfinished work" has animated Hillary Clinton's campaign as well. Asked at the outset to name her all-time favorite president, she joked: "Sorry, President Obama; sorry Bill. Abraham Lincoln." Turning serious, she called him the president "who understood profoundly...the importance of government playing its role in providing opportunities."
Introducing her economic plan in New York, she specifically endorsed Lincoln's goal of "clearing the path of laudable pursuit for all--to give all a fair chance in the race of life." By comparison, Donald Trump's comments about Lincoln to date have been--to be charitable--uninformed. Challenged over his temperament in March, Trump bristled: "I will be more presidential than anybody other than the great Abe Lincoln," adding: "He was very presidential, right?" But what had made Lincoln presidential? Explained Trump: he was "a man that did something that was a very vital thing to do at that time. Ten years before or twenty years before, what he was doing would never have been thought possible. So he did something that was a very important thing to do, and especially at that time."
"The challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincoln's time," Hillary Clinton admitted in a speech in Springfield in July. "Not even close. But recent events have left people across America asking hard questions about whether we are still a house divided."
Lincoln worked hard to unite the house, even if he sometimes acted like a "politician" to reach his goals. But that is a nuanced history, and sadly, if voters ever knew it, many have forgotten it.
Lincoln could lob catch phrases that resonated with his contemporaries and future generations alike. But when it came to the daunting task of being president, he chose substance over style, and worked hard--both before the public and behinds the scenes--to save the Union and destroy slavery.
Yes, he had his debate moments as well--some of them so barbed they are all but recognizable today as "Lincolnian." In truth, the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were much more like the toxic presidential debates of 2016--in tone, if not in the length of the candidates' remarks--than we may care to admit.
But even in that roiling milieu, Lincoln could sometimes soar to great heights--particularly when his opponent denied that the American promise of equal rights was essential to both our founding and our future (sound familiar?).
In response, Lincoln charged of his opponent: "he is blowing the moral lights around us...eradicating the love of liberty in this American people... [T]hat ends the chapter."
If only. The moral lights are flickering again. Perhaps Lincoln--if truly understood--can illuminate the right path again.