Looking for Lincoln

This weekend, my parents come up to DC, which they'd never visited before. I've spent the last couple of days showing them around. I took them to most of the cliche places: Mount Vernon, Vietnam wall, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial... The Lincoln Memorial is by far my favorite DC monument. Like Nixon, I've gone in the late night and sat quietly by the huge, 19-foot statute. (And like Nixon, I may not have been sober at the time.)

Every time, I read his second inaugural address engraved on the marble wall, and try to imagine him--lanky, awkward, freakishly tall yet benign and strong--giving the speech. The end of the speech, "with malice toward none, with charity for all..."--the non-idiot's precedent to Bush's "uniter, not a divider" incoherence--always made me wish for many more Lincolns in our presidential future. This time around, I focused on several sentences which I probably looked over in the past because I didn't remember ever reading them.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

Yes. In these times of indiscriminate religious invocation and overreach, we are in need of another Lincoln, or at the very least, we must make use of his wisdom.

Everything I've read of Lincoln--most recently Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals--details a humble, down-to-earth man with a strong hold on basic convictions in a world gone mad. (Again, possibly the precedent to Bush's pretensions, though the White House communications people likely have something to do with that.) One anecdote tells of a supporter of the North telling Lincoln they should pray God is on their side, and Lincoln responding they should instead pray that they're on God's side.

Another has a political opponent in a Congressional race polling members of a congregation by a show of hands, or some such device, whether they're going to heaven. When Lincoln, who was present, fails to respond, the questions turn to him and the opponent asks where Lincoln thought he was going, heaven or hell. Lincoln coolly responds, I'm going to Congress, and walks out.

Yes, let's pray for many more Lincolns.