These Times: A Repeat

Halfway into President Obama's first year in office, I made an observation that's worth repeating.

---

I'm reminded of a comment Frederick Douglass once made about Abraham Lincoln, for whom the President has great respect, which I am afraid applies to some of the programs Obama has put forward as well. Douglass was speaking on April 14, 1876, before a crowd in Washington, D.C. (including then-President Ulysses S. Grant) as part of a ceremony dedicating a monument to Lincoln as Emancipator of the slaves.

Douglass didn't pull a single punch in his speech. He said Lincoln (mindful that he was Caucasian, and in advance of Franz Fanon noted that hardship experienced as part of a majority bears no resemblance to suffering as a minority) had two missions: To save the United States from coming apart, and to "free his country from the great crime of slavery." To do this, Lincoln had to have "the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow countrymen."

Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

The President is trying to perform just such a balancing act as Lincoln did; and to most people in the Center, he appears resolute and decisive. But simply being a more thoughtful, empathetic and intelligent human being than the Guttersnipe who occupied the White House before him isn't enough.

---