Newsweek: Obama’s Lincoln
It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings, relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones-by hand, on yellow legal paper-such as his remarkably honest speech on race during the Reverend Wright imbroglio last spring.
Obama does have a talented young speechwriter named Jon Favreau, and on the day before the election, Favreau worked up a draft of a victory speech and sent it to Obama. The word came back from Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, who was sitting with Obama in Charlotte, N.C.: "Barack wants to lean into bipartisanship a little more. Even though the Democrats have won a great victory, we should reach out and be humbled by it. Figure out a good Lincoln quote to bring it all together," advised Axelrod, who suggested looking at the end of Lincoln's first Inaugural Address.
More than familiar with Lincoln's rhetoric, Favreau decided to pass on the most overquoted passage of all, invoking "the better angels of our nature," and to quote the words that came before: "We are not enemies, but friends … Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
To a public thoroughly sick of partisan bickering, these words rang with hope as Obama spoke them on election night before a vast crowd in Chicago's Grant Park. If there was any one message that defined the Obama campaign from the beginning, it was his promise to rise above the petty politics of division and unite the country. But now comes reality. The newly elected Congress will be left of center, particularly the old liberal bulls that chair committees and form much of the leadership of the House and Senate. The country, on the other hand, remains right of center (exit polls on Election Day show that 22 percent of voters identify themselves as liberal, 33 percent as conservative and 46 percent as moderate). Especially in the Senate, where the Democrats will be perhaps two or three votes shy of the 60 needed to break a filibuster and pass a bill, compromise and coalition-building will be the order of the day. If Obama is to accomplish much of anything, he is going to need all the leadership skills of a Lincoln.
The theme of Obama's Inauguration is taken from a line in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "A New Birth of Freedom." Asked in January by CBS anchor Katie Couric which book, aside from the Bible, he would find essential in the Oval Office, Obama answered, "Team of Rivals." Doris Kearns Goodwin's 2005 bestseller recounts how Lincoln surrounded himself with advisers who were better educated and more experienced and who made no secret of coveting Lincoln's job. Obama has yet to announce his cabinet, but he is clearly looking at some strong personalities, such as Larry Summers at Treasury, and he is considering keeping on Bush's secretary of defense, Robert Gates. Bursting with ego, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's pick as White House chief of staff, does not at all fit the "No Drama" Obama mode of the campaign. Emanuel once sent a foe a dead fish wrapped in newspaper.
The most intriguing possibility to emerge last week was the suggestion that Hillary Clinton might become secretary of state. She flew to Chicago to meet with Obama, and a senior Obama aide, speaking anonymously about confidential matters, tells NEWSWEEK she is "under consideration." She would, of course, have to decide whether she should abandon her career in the Senate, and Obama will have to weigh the risk of back-seat driving by her husband, the former president.
During the Civil War, Lincoln was able to brilliantly manage his team of rivals. His secretary of state, William Seward, came into office thinking "he would actually be controlling Lincoln," notes Goodwin, but Lincoln was able to sit Seward down, remind him who was president-and ultimately make him his close friend. Lincoln, in some ways, had it easier than Obama will. Cabinet secretaries in the 1860s could not step out on the White House lawn and hold press conferences with cable-TV networks. But Goodwin, who has spoken with Obama about her book, thinks he has absorbed the deeper meaning of Lincoln's leadership style. "I think he's got a temperamental set of qualities that have some resemblance to Lincoln's emotional intelligence," Goodwin tells NEWSWEEK.
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source: Newsweek