As primary season unfolds, health care and the mortgage crisis seem to be taking a backseat to religion ”” specifically, the candidates’ eager assertions about how Christian they are.
Mitt Romney gave a much-heralded speech about the depth of his Christian faith. Mike Huckabee is emphasizing his background as a Baptist minister and airing a commercial that appears to feature a cross behind his head.
It has gotten way out of hand. What would great American leaders of the past think of all of this religiousity in the middle of a political campaign? What Would Abe Lincoln Do?
Actually, the historical record gives us a pretty good idea….
In re:
“Somehow, we doubt that if Lincoln, one of the greatest Republicans in history, made this statement today he would have any chance of winning the presidential nomination of the party that now bears that name.”
The NYT forgets that when Lincoln ‘ran’ for president, he was not at all the frontrunner until the Convention avoided nominating more radical sectional candidates. The fact that Lincoln avoided polarizing issues of all sorts, in order to support the concept of an undivided Union, did not garner him support until the inadequacies of the alternative candidates were seen close at hand in Convention. Prior to that Convention, Lincoln in fact had very little chance of winning the nomination, but stances just like the top level’s subject helped him to be an acceptable compromise candidate.
Incidently, the flip side of being seen as the ‘compromise candidate’ was that all the major Republican power brokers like Seward and Cameron thought that Lincoln would be a pushover in office. Based on stances like the top level’s, I could easily see how the powerbrokers made that mistake.
When did Romney develop a Christian faith?
“…Lincoln, one of the greatest Republicans in history…”
Oh, come now. It’s all right, one in a while, to go ahead and pronounce someone “THE greatest”. The author of this sentence needs to be a little more daring.
Considering this is [i] The New York Times [/i] , I suppose we should be grateful they did not write “…Lincoln, one of the least evil Republicans in history…”
The modern GOP is no more the Party of Lincoln then the Democrats are the Party of Jefferson. There have been a couple of major political shifts since Lincoln’s time, particularly during the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Goldwater revolution. Take flak as I do for it, I’ve long believed Lincoln would be a Democrat today, if anything. 1860s Republicans were federalists, morally and economically liberal, powerful in the North and West, all things that the Democrats are today. 1860s Democrats were advocates for strong states rights, morally and economically conservative with a populist flavor, and strong in the South, much like the GOP today. If anything, I think the Lincoln of today is Barack Obama, a little known legislator from Illinois, with little experience and soaring rhetoric (a comparison Obama himself has pushed since announcing from the old Springfield Capitol). But in the words of historian David Lowenthal, the past is a foreign country. We can only take such comparisons lightly. They are only so useful.
Whatever Lincoln’s party stance he was certainly the man for the hour! He advocated a Union and wound up giving his life for it eventually.
If Lincoln had not been elected president we would not have his gracious and powerful words of faith in the Proclamation establishing Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday, nor the gripping, hard Calvinist theology of the Second Inaugural Address. There’s hardly a president in our history who could match him theologically.