Legal Commentary

Revisiting Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union Address

By Big Tent Democrat

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Via Matt Yglesias (who misunderstands Wills' post imo), Garry Wills revisits Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union Address and compares it to Barack Obama's address on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Race. For nearly four years now, I have been, along with Digby, writing about the political lessons of Lincoln 1860. My first post ever Talk Left post discussed what Obama needed to learn from Lincoln's Cooper Union address. Wills rightly describes Lincoln's political challenges when he delivered it:

Lincoln's Republican Party was accused of supporting abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who burned the Constitution, or John Brown, who took arms against United States troops, or those who rejected the Supreme Court because of its Dred Scott decision. . . . How to face such charges? [Lincoln] decided to address them openly in a prominent national venue. . . .

Lincoln followed a threefold strategy in his speech, arguing (1) that he was more observant of the Constitution than were his critics, and (2) that Republicans were more conservative than their foes (here he addressed the John Brown issue), and (3) that he was not opposed to the judgment of the Supreme Court but to its information (here he addressed the Dred Scott issue)

. . .

I described it a bit differently, but to the same effect:

Lincoln's Cooper Union speech was incendiary and divisive. Douglas was the uniter, the compromiser, the DLCer of his time. . . Lincoln sho[t] right across the bow of the South. What was he trying to do - obviously, flip the extremist label - place it on the South, take it off the Republicans. . . . Win the Center.

It was my critique that Obama had not learned the lessons of the Cooper Union Address. But Wills argues that Obama did so in his Race and Wright Address. Wills argues:

Obama's speech has been widely praised—compared with JFK's speech to Protestant ministers, or FDR's First Inaugural, even to the Gettysburg Address. Those are exaggerations. But the comparison with the Cooper Union address is both more realistic and more enlightening. It helps us understand each text better, one in terms of the other, since both speakers faced similar obstacles to their becoming president. Both used a campaign occasion to rise to a higher vision of America's future. Both argued intelligently for closer union in the cause of progress.

. . . In his prose, Obama of necessity lagged far behind the resplendent Lincoln. But what is of lasting interest is their similar strategy for meeting the charge of extremism. Both argued against the politics of fear. . . . Each looked for larger patterns under the surface bitternesses of their day. Each forged a moral position that rose above the occasions for their speaking.

(Emphasis supplied.) I think Wills' analysis misses the mark - he ignores what he points out, that Lincoln branded his opponents as extremists. I think it is fair to say that the Wright speech was hardly the moment for Obama to do that, but there seems to have been no moments for Obama to practice the Politics of Contrast and Negative Branding as exemplified by Lincoln in his Cooper Union Address.

In the end, Wills' analysis is quite unsatisfying to me. It ignores that both Lincoln and Obama acted as politicians with political goals. What were their goals in their speeches? to Wills, Lincoln and Obama needed to neutralize the charges of extremism against them. That is fair. But Wills fails to acknowledge Lincoln's additional goal - one he achieved - to brand his opponents as Extremist (and to brand "moderates" like Douglas as aligned with such extremists.) Obama had no such goal in his Wright speech. And frankly, has not had such a goal in his entire poltical career. The political significance of Obama's failure to learn that lesson from Lincoln's speech is entirely missed by Wills.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 12, 2008 (boomark / email).