For Barack Obama and the better angels of our nature
At the close of his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke to those who would divide the United States.
"We are not enemies, but friends," said the 16th president. "We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
On this, the 199th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, America is again divided.
The question that will be answered by voters in Wisconsin next Tuesday, and by voters nationwide in November, is whether this land must remain divided.
The seven years of George Bush's tragically flawed attempt at a presidency have strained the very fabric of this nation. Our debates about war and peace, taxes and spending, civil rights and civil liberties have developed bitter edges that suggest we are enemies: Democrat versus Republican, Red State versus Blue State, liberal versus conservative.
And yet, most Americans are still touched by the better angels of our nature.
We still believe that this great nation can and should be what Lincoln imagined: "the last best hope of Earth."
That, more than any of the vagaries of campaign finance, primary scheduling or simplistic candidate comparisons, explains why Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency has been so successful -- and why it must prevail on Feb. 19 in Wisconsin and at this summer's Democratic National Convention in Denver.
It may be mere coincidence that Obama is, like Lincoln, an Illinoisan with a relatively short resume of electoral service.
But as Obama submits himself to what his predecessor called "this great tribunal of the American people," we are reminded of the essential message of Lincoln's distant campaigning: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew and then we shall save our country."
There are some Democrats who still suggest that to support Obama requires too great a leap of faith, just as it has always been suggested of young men who bid for the presidency before the established order judges it to be their time. But the American people have a history of understanding, as they did with Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, that sound judgment and an ability to inspire should count for more than a long resume and the burden of knowing too much of what is not supposed to be achievable and too little of the infinite possibility of this unfinished American experiment.
The last of Obama's serious competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has put in more time in Washington, and she has the scars to prove it. As an activist first lady and more recently as the senator from New York, Clinton has fought her share of battles with "the vast right-wing conspiracy" that she so famously named. But she has too often seemed to fight for power as opposed to principle. She supported the draconian welfare reforms and the fundamentally flawed free trade deals promoted by Bill Clinton's administration, she voted in the Senate for the Patriot Act and the resolution authorizing George Bush to take the country to war with Iraq, and as a presidential candidate she has condoned an often crude and divisive campaign.
Clinton's record is longer. But it is not commendable.
Obama's record is shorter, and imperfect in places. But it is superior to Clinton's. As a community organizer in Chicago. Obama worked to save industrial jobs and the neighborhoods they sustain. As an Illinois state senator he was an ardent advocate of that state's historic death penalty moratorium. As a likely contender for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2003, he marched with anti-war protesters. As a freshman senator he worked with Wisconsin's Russ Feingold to promote sweeping ethics reforms. And as a presidential candidate he has mounted a campaign distinguished by its optimism, its vigor, its appeal to the young and the previously disengaged, and its success in upending the calculations of those who thought they controlled our politics.
Everything about Clinton suggests that, at best, she would manage a smooth transition from the Bush era.
Everything about Obama suggests that he favors a bolder break with the failed politics and policies of the Bush interregnum.
Obama proposes something far more radical than Clinton imagines: a transformation. His is the politics of faith in the prospect of democratic renewal; of the worthy dream that a divided people might unite around common purposes and lower partisan barriers to make possible dramatic shifts in the way the United States relates to the world and to itself.
Last month, Clinton and Obama sparred about this new politics.
Clinton said, "We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."
Obama said, "This whole notion of false hopes bothers me. There is no such thing as false hopes."
Something tells us that Lincoln would have preferred Obama's response. And so, we think, will the voters of Wisconsin, a state that since it embraced another radical from Illinois 148 years ago has so frequently preferred the audacity of hope to the compromise of complacency.
As Wisconsin's Feb. 19 primary approaches, we hope that Democrats, independents and Republicans will again embrace the better angels of our nature and support the candidacy of Barack Obama in numbers so overwhelming that he can secure his claim on the Democratic nomination and, ultimately, on the presidency of a nation that is so ready to begin anew.
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