Garry Wills has a fascinating piece in the May 1st edition of the NY Review of Books comparing Barack Obama's speech at the National Constitution Center and Abraham Lincoln's speech at Cooper Union. Unfortunately the online edition is subscription only so you will have to find a print copy to read it.
What is significant about the speeches is that both men were responding to attempts to marginalize their candidacies by critics who tried to tie them to polarizing figures. John Brown in the case of Lincoln; Jeremy Wright in the case of Obama. Both men were faced with the problem that to simply attack these radical figures would potentially alienate important allies. The strategy used in both speeches was to reframe and elevate the whole discussion so that they could both acknowledge and even affirm the wrongs that Brown and Wright were concerned with while criticizing specific actions that that they took in response to these wrongs.
The Cooper Union speech is generally credited with preserving Lincoln's candidacy.
(More after the fold)
The article grabbed me from the first paragraph by enumerating the parallels between the two men:
- Candidates for president from Illinois
- Relatively young (Lincoln was just shy of 51, while Obama is 46)
- Political experience was primarily local
- Their primary opponent was a seasoned Senator from New York with a greater prior reputation
- Opposed to an initially popular war based on a fictitious provocation (in Lincoln's case the Mexican War)
- Neither fit their era's image of a politician
- Faced with damaging charges linking them to radical elements
- Responded to these charges at a national forum (Cooper Union in New York and the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, respectively)
Wills then proceeds to draw out the parallels between two speeches:
- Acknowledge the grievances of the critics but holding them to task for failing to focus on a common national goal.
In Lincoln's case he confirmed the South's right to own slaves within the slave states but criticized their willingness to put the union at risk in their attempts to force slaveholding into the remaining area of the country.
- Criticize the specific actions of radical associates while still respecting the real concerns the motivated those actions.
Lincoln attacked Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry as "absurd" and harmful to his cause, pointing out the slaves did not take it seriously enough to participate in a generally uprising.
- Call for all sides to work towards a common goal of national unity.
Wills concludes:
". . . what is of lasting interest is their similar strategy for meeting the charge of extremism. Both argued against the politics of fear. Neither denied the darker aspects of our history, yet held out hold for what Lincoln called here the better 'lights of current experience' -- what he would later call the 'better angels of our nature.' Each looked for the larger patterns under the surface bitternesses of their day. Each forged a moral position that rose above the occasions for their speaking.
For myself, Obama's speech turned from an indifferent supporter to an active one. I had initially supported Edwards because of his economic stance. Once he left the race I gravitated to Obama not because I thought his positions were significantly better than Clinton's but because of her unwillingness to admit to making an error in supporting the military authorization bill and the significant involvement of DLC types in her campaign.
I supported Obama despite some misgivings about his ability to take on the Republican machine and move this country in a more progressive direction. Like many I feared he was all smoke and no fire.
Not only did Obama's speech move me, but it gave me a clearer sense of what he meant by a politics of Hope that reached out to both sides of the aisle. I no longer feared that Obama would fold before the Republican thuggery but was capable of creating a powerful vision that would allow people to move beyond the fears that the Republicans have so effectively exploited in recent years.
I cannot imagine Clinton giving a speech like that. I cannot imagine her creating such a powerful vision for this country. So long as the people of this nation are focused primarily on their own concerns we are susceptible to fear mongering. A leader who can create a vision that moves us to be concerned with nation as a whole and has the potential to breakthrough the stalemate of recent years and change.