The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

Obama, Dick, and Andy: "I Wanna Talk About Me"

About a year ago, Barack Obama caused a personal pronoun stir when CNSNews.com reported that he used the first person pronouns "I" and "me" a combined total of 117 times in a single speech.  But, however, Obama is far from alone in "wanting to talk about me."

About a year and six weeks before the oft reported July 2012 speech, blogger Marc Cenedella reported an analysis of Obama speeches given at CIA headquarters compared with several of his predecessors.  Since 1968, Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush referred to themselves the least often.  George H. W. Bush gets a pass for a slightly higher level because he once was CIA chief, which would lead to more first person mentions.

By far, the three highest levels of use came from Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.  Clinton's high use shrinks when Cenedella factors in the length of the addresses.  The famously loquacious Clinton drops down to Bushian levels of first person pronoun use while Obama and Nixon remain higher than the rest.

In his 1960 work Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, famed American historian Eric McKitrick examined another president persistent in his employment of first person pronouns.

About Johnson, he wrote :

For a public man, he was obsessed with himself to a degree that exceeded the normal, and most of his speeches, no matter what else they dealt with, may be read as demands for personal vindication and personal approval.

McKitrick also concluded that Johnson preferred general rules to concrete thinking "in order that (his mind) might once more close itself and be at rest."

Johnson, at his worst, often evoked images of crucifixion and Judah Iscariot-like betrayal in reference to himself and his enemies.  This worked in the East Tennessee hills where the poor felt just as nailed to a cross by their betters as he did.  But it fell short of the expectations that the national public had for the demeanor of their president.

McKitrick compared the inferiority complex of Johnson to the confidence of Lincoln.  About the 16th president, he said his "'humility' was sustained by the odd arrogance of a superior man's self-knowledge."  Interestingly, this also describes President Reagan and both chief executives of the Bush family.

Nixon's public speaking patterns mimicked McKitrick's evaluation of Johnson, especially early.  Journalist Theodore White remembered almost a decade later that in 1960, Nixon's "common utterances all too frequently a mixture of pathetic self-pity and petulant distemper."  Aide Robert Finch told White in 1968 that Nixon" doesn't want to be loved.  He's not looking for adulation the way he used to."  But that campaign evaluation looks more like Nixon covering than transforming his nature.

The three presidents all share in common some attributes.  All three worked to expand the authority of the executive branch.  None of them could work and play well with anyone except their closest trusted associates. All three had fatal flaws that kept them from functioning comfortably in the role chosen for them by the public.  Nixon enjoyed the most success, but of course unraveled his legacy by covering criminal activities.  Obama and Nixon both preferred layers of secrecy to public examination of their administration's doings.  Conversely, Johnson was perhaps too open about his exact feelings for proposals and personalities.

Of the three, Johnson was far and away the best speaker.  He could address a crowd extemporaneously for hours.  Sure, the crowds sometimes despised him after his efforts, but Johnson could never leave an audience cold.  Obama reads well from a teleprompter, but may be one of the worst presidential speakers if the ability to speak and respond without notes is factored.

Will Obama's presidency end in scandal and/or disgrace as Johnson and Nixon's did?  It certainly has achieved no success that has been of any value to the people. And history's remembrance of Johnson certainly has found echoes in Obama.

History will illuminate more of Obama as years and decades pass, but he has shown enough over the past several years that some conclusions are inescapable.

The most important of these is that Obama has been consistently a much smaller man than the American presidency demands.

Obama's "Swing 'Round the Circle"

On the Magical Misery Tour, the debt man walking continued his Andrew Johnson impersonation, traveling around the Midwest, giving speeches that even further bury his presidency. (In 1866, Johnson conducted his "Swing 'Round the Circle" tour where he took on Congress in a series of speeches. By the end of the tour, train officials routinely feared for the life of the president because the crowds grew so violent.) In his most recent speech, Obama compared criticism of himself to that of Lincoln. This implied that opposition to Obama is quasi-treasonous, a note he has sounded in the past. None other than Eric Foner, quasi left wing historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, slammed Obama's recent self-comparison to the 16th president.

Obama's series of speeches, like Johnson's, have laid bare the nature of the president. He is self-absorbed without enduring self-reflection. His speeches emphasize his trials, his suffering, his political enemies' machinations. Audiences in 1866 found these themes unnerving in their chief executive. In 2011, the president is trying to toss everyone under his bus, but so far has only thrown his own reputation beneath the wheels.

Obama criticism has not even reached the depths of the fecal matter slung at his predecessor, much less the unfortunate Lincoln, who endured commentary on every aspect of his presidency and life. Few people, really outside of me, have questioned Obama's intelligence and all will admit that he can read a teleprompter with style. People have issues with how the president has performed so far. He has made glaring errors on every level and has no shortage of other people to blame. Most recently, he blamed politics itself as the main obstacle to his leading us to a glorious promised land.

People are fed up. Even his own supporters, such as those in the Congressional Black Caucus, imply that he has been less of a savior and more of a carnival barker. Obama is reminiscent of Harry Truman's description of another failed president, James Buchanan in that he spent a long period of time trying to become president, then once he got there, he had no sense of how to do the job.

The Trap of the Imperial Presidency

Historians will often use the phrase "Imperial Presidency" to describe a personal style of rule that some chief executives assume. When thinking about this concept, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt often come up in discussions. Debates arise over whether or not personal rule is best for the country because it gets things done quickly, or whether it violates the balance of powers set in the Constitution.

The main instrument in the hands of an aspiring imperial president has been the executive order. This has the force of law and can claim indirect lineage from the Middle Ages era power of the monarch to make statutes. In recent years executive orders have proliferated and encompass a much broader scope than in the past. Obama exacerbated the problem of expanding presidential power by appointing powerful bureaucratic chieftains nicknamed "czars" to direct policy. These men and women, unlike official advisors, do not require Senatorial consent.

Lincoln and Roosevelt have this in common. They used their expanded powers during a time of national crisis. After Lincoln, the power of the president, for various reasons, shrank. During the Cold War and after it has expanded. Yes a president needs the authority to meet national emergencies, but too many use that power in more mundane situations.

Much of this is our fault. We expect our presidents to be superhuman. They must maintain economic prosperity, national security, protect innocents around the world, and attend to every issue that we think is important. When crises occur, we expect him or her to do something. We are not sure what, but we want something done, even when it would be better to do nothing.

In this way we resemble Rome at the end of the Republic. They had elected consuls that could not solve every social problem. When the dictator Julius Caesar acted forcefully, the people approved even though it broke their constitution. After Caesar came civil war and the establishment of the empire. Augustus was everything his people could have wanted in a leader, just, wise, effective. He seemed to affirm the positives of the imperial ideal. However when less scrupulous, and then downright insane people inherited the throne, the power Augustus used for good was bent towards evil goals.

We must put the brakes on the imperial presidency through constitutional amendment. First, kill off the czars. No major appointments without the "advice and consent of the Senate." Second, cap executive orders. No executive order may remain in force for more than five years without congressional affirmation. That is enough time for a president to address an emergency. Executive orders involving the seizure of land must be approved by the state legislature, or territorial, or Indian reservation authorities before they go into effect. This is the first step in restoring balance to our system and saving our Republic.

Lincoln Ranked First Among Presidents By Panel of Sixty Five Historians

Although not surprising that they picked Abraham Lincoln, frankly they got it dead wrong.

There is one single president that transcends the office even while defining it. No president faced the kinds of challenges overcome by this man. No other president comes close to him when one considers leadership ability, long term effect of his presidency, or any other standard of leadership.

It may be unfashionable to speak the obvious, but George Washington is and will always be the greatest president in United States history.

Before Washington there was no office of the president. The Constitution offered some vague details, but little in the way of guidance. Washington's generation had no contemporary examples to serve as models either. King George III? Thanks, but no thanks. The office of Prime Minister was too tied to the legislative branch for Washington's taste (Congress tended to grate on the Father of our Country's nerves.) Washington looked somewhat to the consuls of the Roman Republic, who held many of the same powers. Most of all he looked to his own common sense.

Washington strove to create balance. He needed balance in foreign affairs. A vulnerable infant nation in a world of rapacious Great Powers could not succumb to any one side, but needed to maintain a dignified neutrality. A nation with no economic growth in 1789 needed to balance the agricultural interest with his own vision of America growing into a commercial empire. He had to balance his attention between his two friends and colleagues Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Most importantly he balanced the need to enhance the respect of the people for the office of president while maintaining an air of republican simplicity.

In short, Washington had to define the office of president and also went a long way towards defining what the United States would be in its distant future. Lincoln was a great president, but no one has ever overcome the kinds of challenges faced by Washington so successfully.

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Predictably the list of presidents rated George W. Bush very low, even below Carter (who actually dropped since the last ranking.) Seven years of prosperity and security combined with a new respect for the United States around the world did not impress the historians. Of course none of them brought a sliver of bias to the table.

Surprisingly, Ronald Reagan, who used to be placed in the middle or near the bottom, reached number ten. George H. W. Bush, once criticized and ranked poorly because he left Saddam Hussein in place in 1991, rose to number 18.

Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, James Madison, William McKinley, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower are my top ten.

Why is Theodore Roosevelt as low as he is? The more I read about his domestic policies, the more squeamish I get. Yes the government needed to expand some regulatory powers, but his tended to follow his own whim rather than the rule of law. Were it not for a wildly successful foreign policy, I'd send him lower. I prefer McKinley who had a strong foreign policy and a more limited ideal of government power. Truman goes before Reagan by a hair because he recognized the Soviet threat before many others and challenged it almost from the beginning. James Madison was flexible enough to alter his position during the War of 1812, casting ideology aside in the greater effort to beat the British. I left out Jefferson because his foreign policy led directly to economic disaster. He also used the authority of his office to financially crush political rivals.

George W. Bush to me is definitely in the top 20. You cannot lay the current financial crisis at his feet since he tried to get both Republican and Democratic congresses to address the various issues that caused the problems. It would be like blaming Isaiah for the Babylonians conquering Judah. It's not his fault that nobody listened. The second Bush will climb as we get further from his presidency.

Debatable

Time magazine, rarely a publication with conservative sympathies, declared John McCain the winner of the final presidential debate. The immediate impact of the debate itself did not register the same with other pundits. McCain has a tremendous amount of work to do in the last few weeks to win the election.

I have a problem with the focus so intensely placed upon presidential debates. News outlets and major networks play them up to gain ratings. The billing for them resembles that of a boxing match, especially in CNN's marketing. How much do they really matter?

To me they border on almost the meaningless. A president's strongest attribute ought to be what he decides on important questions and issues after thought and consideration. The debate format reduces significant positions of policy into easily digestible chunks with an emphasis on how such information is delivered. A witty remark trumps five minutes of thoughtful response. Brutus can never compete with Mark Antony.

Picking who you want to be president based upon debate performance is like selecting an NBA first round draft pick based upon how well the player competes in H-O-R-S-E. It reflects one small part of what ought be be consideration of the entire candidate. What has he done? What does he believe? What will he do as president?

History remembers very few debates. Ronald Reagan, one of the greatest communicators to ever sit in the Oval Office, got trounced in a debate with the forgettable Walter Mondale. John F. Kennedy's debate performance (rather than his flagrant and outright lies about the "missile gap" in an election that hinged on the national security debate) is credited in his victory that he won by the skin of his teeth over Nixon.

Some great men would never have consented to debate. Washington (like Adams and most 19th century candidates) considered personal campaigning beneath him, much less a debate. Lincoln famously debated in a Senate campaign with Stephen Douglas, but never met his opponents in 1860 or 64. Lincoln was a master at this art, mixing a great legal mind with the fine art of storytelling.

The election of 2008 has thus far favored the great speaker with nothing to say over the solid man of experience. Speaking and debating reveals nothing of the true substance of a candidate. In stormy times, one should cling to a rock instead of a forsythia bush.

Keeping It In Perspective

MSNBC exploded into my living room last night to announce that Election 2008 will be the most critical in our history. It then "treated" me to shots of Keith Obermann, Chris Matthews, and other screaming meemies it plans to use to cover this year's cycle. This represents one of those rare events that outhypes the Super Bowl.

Honestly the news has completely lost its credibility. When Dan Rather uses very questionable evidence to attack a president and elections are treated like ballgames, you can see that the media creates stories as much as reports them. The hype machine for this year's election started in 2006 and has resulted in frenzied coverage of every potential aspect, right down to how Chelsea Clinton responds to reporters.

Actually this election may be one of the less eventful or important in terms of the presidency compared to others in our nation's history. The election of 1800 was important because we transferred power from one party to another peacefully for the first time. In 1828 white men without property voted in many states for the first time, opening a new era in national politics complete with slogans and mudslinging. Both of Lincoln's elections addressed major national questions, in 1864 quite possibly whether the Union would win the Civil War or allow the Confederacy to live. Of course FDR's first election in 1932 brought on the New Deal and our world would look very different if the results of 1980 had been anything other than a Reagan victory.

This election so far has sputtered and puttered along. No candidate really has grabbed the imagination of their party while the presumed nominees from about this time last year have hit some obstacles. America's mayor has great leadership qualities, but what are his core beliefs and how will they affect his decisions? The former first lady right now seems to frighten some liberals almost as much as conservatives, although despite Iowa, she is a likely shoe in as the Democratic nominee. Obama will give her a scare early, as McCain did Bush in 2000. However she has been preparing this for too long.

That being said, this election does not seem to feature great national questions. Iraq is winding down towards a positive conclusion although the Middle East still has severe problems. Suddenly Democratic nominees want to debate the economy again. The Republicans have a pretty good track record there, despite the media attempts to paint it otherwise. Bush's administration has secured America from attack for almost seven years now, enabling the population at large to put the homeland security issue on the backburner. In other words, what are the great issues of this cycle? They are important, but they do not compare to the nation torn in two or crippling economic depressions.

Don't get me wrong, that does not mean that this election is not important. There are many reasons to be concerned about who will run the country for the next several years. However, overhyping anything produces mental callouses on the intended audience. How can presidential candidates seriously debate important issues when the media overhyping has caused too many to tune out? Then the media will wring its hands and wonder why so many voters ignore the elections altogether.