Dishonest Abe Lincoln

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Politician, always a swear word in America, has now become a deadly insult -- though it is a little hard to understand why. Are we just learning that politicians say one thing to get elected and do something entirely different once they win? Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt both promised to shrink the government's powers when campaigning, and both men expanded those powers as President. The politician is evasive if not duplicitous? The method of choosing candidates is arbitrary if not corrupt? The candidate hides his or her real views while trying to please diverse constituencies? All that has been true of our politics from the beginning, and never more true than in the case of the man who is more revered than any of our other Presidents. Abraham Lincoln was calculating and equivocal on the issue of slavery. He was nominated by one of the most corrupt conventions ever held. And he hid his views so carefully that he issued not a single statement, gave not a single speech, between his nomination and the 1860 election. He was a good pol. He could never have been a great President -- or a President of any kind -- unless he had been a tough and flexible pol.

Lincoln was largely self-taught in the area of books and literature. But in politics he underwent a long, hard schooling from his peers, and he graduated magna sine laude from that bruising course. Opponents would later exaggerate his crudity; but as a man on the frontier who neither drank whiskey nor smoked cigars, he used his disarming gifts as a storyteller in ways that later Americans have preferred not to remember. Today it might be called a character issue that Lincoln told racist and obscene stories to make a point among his none too delicate peers. One man who served with Lincoln in Congress reminded him, in a letter, of Lincoln's "story of the old Virginian stropping his razor on a certain member of a young Negro's body."

Lincoln could play rough as well as talk tough. Informed that Democrats were bringing in ringers from out of state to vote in Illinois, Lincoln suggested that toughs should infiltrate the illiterates and "turn" them, so they would vote (illegally) for him. "Could not a true man of the 'detective' class be introduced among them in disguise, who could, at the nick of time, control their votes? Think this over. It would be a great thing, when this trick is attempted upon us, to have the saddle come up on the other horse."

That dirty trick was planned for the 1858 Senate campaign, in which Lincoln was running against Stephen Douglas. People who remember that race often praise the high-minded discourse of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They should keep in mind what Lincoln was planning for the back alleys of the campaign. (They should also keep in mind that no one in the audience at those debates could vote directly for either of the speakers. Senators were then still chosen by state legislatures.)