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Obama's presidential role model
Viewpoint
Thursday November 20th 2008
Even presidents-elect need a hero to get them through times of crisis. Obama has reached back to the mid-19th century and chosen Abraham Lincoln, writes Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday November 20th 2008
President Abraham Lincoln. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Expect to hear a lot about a certain former president between now and Barack Obama’s installation in the White House on January 20. Not about Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president; not after a primary season in which Obama deliberately downplayed the achievements of that presidency. And for all the talk of youth, glamour and the restoration of Camelot with two children in the White House, it won’t be John Kennedy. Obama ruled out Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he said that New Deal public works projects were not the solution for today’s crisis.
Instead Obama, who more than any other politician has embraced 21st-century communication tools, text messages and web 2.0 technologies, has reached back to the mid-19th century to choose his model of a US presidency: Abraham Lincoln. The focus on Lincoln is a clear sign of a president-elect adjusting his thinking from campaign to governance.
On the campaign trail, Obama chose another great American as inspiration and validation: Martin Luther King. He was careful not to cast himself as King’s heir. That would have been seen as presumptuous by black Americans of the civil rights generation, while the direct reminder of Obama’s race might have turned off some white Americans. He did not often quote directly from King, but there were constant references to King’s resonant speeches, which produced the most memorable moments. On the night of his election, Obama channelled King’s last speech before his assassination in 1968 in which he spoke of the achievements of civil rights activists, and promised his audience they would get to the promised land even if he might not. At Obama’s victory party, he did not need to use the exact words for people to understand this was a promise fulfilled. "We will get there," was all he said.
The guiding force for the presidential Obama seems to be more Lincoln than King. Some of the comparisons are superficial: Lincoln was also a tall, thin man from Illinois. Like Obama, he was a lawyer by training and came from outside the centres of political power. Though he achieved great success as a lawyer, Lincoln wrote often about his humble backwoods beginnings. And, like Obama, Lincoln was criticised by his enemies for his inexperience. There are more substantial similarities. Lincoln, like Obama, was a gifted writer; unlike most modern politicians, Obama writes his own speeches, at least the most important ones, doing the early drafts by hand on legal pads.
February 2009 marks the bicentenary of Lincoln’s birth, and the theme of Obama’s inauguration is taken from a line in the Gettysburg Address: "A New Birth of Freedom". And Obama has taken further action to encourage the Lincoln association. He launched his run for the White House from the steps of the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois, just as Lincoln did. He told a television interviewer that his indispensable books for the White House would be the Bible and a biography of Lincoln. That biography is being taken as a guide to how Obama means to govern after January 20. The title, Team of Rivals, has set off intense speculation that Obama intends to invite powerful personalities who will challenge his views into his White House, just as Lincoln did.
And there are the enormous challenges Obama faces as he takes office. He has already begun to acknowledge the daunting challenges that await him. He has confessed to feeling overwhelmed by the seriousness of the multiple crises, and to a new understanding of the loneliness of being president. Most presidents will encounter a crisis during their term of office but few have taken office at such as challenging time. Obama faces two wars and a global economic downturn. Lincoln faced worse. The first shots in America’s civil war had been fired by the secessionist south by the time he entered the White House in 1861, smuggled into Washington in disguise. He did not succeed in his campaign promise to heal the divisions between north and south. But by the time of his assassination, the north under his leadership had won the war, and the slaves were freed. So it is understandable that Obama, seeking a model for governance, settled on a president who managed to overcome the problems that awaited him.
Americans are desperate for reassurance that they will keep their jobs, that they will be able to afford health care, that the economy will recover. Obama’s references to so familiar and revered a figure as Lincoln are comforting. But maybe he is trying to do more than reassure American voters that, now elected, he is ready to lead. Maybe even presidents-elect need heroes to get them through a crisis, and Obama has chosen Lincoln. "There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful," Obama said in his first interview after the election. "I find him a very wise man."
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