THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY BLOG

 Needed a Lincoln, Not a Ford

And certainly not an Edsel. 

 

A recent Washington Post article on President Biden’s “...‘easy choice' to go it alone with Democrats on coronavirus relief” prominently featured a picture of the president speaking with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln behind him. It was not the first time that Lincoln’s name or image has been invoked in connection with the Biden Presidency and doubtless, it will not be the last.

President Mr. Biden himself has invoked Lincoln several times. In his Inaugural Address, President  Biden identified with Lincoln, saying (emphasis added): 

“And another January on New Year’s Day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote, “If my name ever goes down into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.” My whole soul was in it today on this January day, my whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation, and I ask every American to join me in this cause.”

As is the case with presidents, few have been shy about offering this president their advice even if not asked. Among their suggestions were the need for a war on white supremacy, curbing the excesses of the left, and not being hypermasculine and toxic.

Perhaps the most startling and dramatic piece of advice from others, including former FBI Director, James Comey, was the suggestion that President Biden pardon Mr. Trump from further criminal charges that Democrats are filing.

The advantages and liabilities of such a decision are clear. President Biden’s progressive allies would be furious. On the other hand, it would be a dramatic statement and action that “…would also allow Biden to declare that he is following through on his pledge to unite America.” 

One immediately thinks here of Gerald Ford and his comforting but short 895-day presidency. After succeeding Richard Nixon, Ford pardoned him. That act of public reconciliation came at great political and personal cost. Though it was “reviled at the time, [it is] celebrated today—was meant to heal the country.” It was a courageous act of personal decency and political healing and very Lincolnesque. It is worth asking how.

One commentator has suggested that President Biden needs to be more than a not-Trump president “with a comforting uncle profile.” In commenting on his own political speaking abilities, Ford liked to say that “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln,” and he promised to emulate Lincoln’s “plain [presumably honest] speaking.” Without mentioning the obvious paradox of Ford’s Lincoln-like treatment of Mr. Nixon, that commentator suggests “the country today needs a Lincoln and not a Ford.” The question is: Exactly what does that mean?.

The Union was saved from dismemberment by a brutal Civil War. Lincoln’s brief Second Inaugural Address contained these stirring words of healing and reconciliation:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Lincoln did not, as Biden did, call for “unity,” but for healing and reconciliation. Yet, he did more than reach for and find almost the perfect tone of a rhetorical premise to frame the clearly difficult process of national emotional reconstruction that lay before the country. 

David Reynold’s well researched political biography of Lincoln notes the following [p. 458, emphasis added] :

“Lincoln balanced himself between extremes: between popular sovereignty and the demand of immediate abolition, between Southern and Northern views, between ungoverned higher laws and what he and other Republicans saw as the anti-slavery higher law within the Constitution. He thought that if he leaned too far in any direction the nation could fall into anarchy or despotism. With the political and cultural forces around him spinning towards centrifugal, he provided a solid centripetal counterweight.”

Lincoln applied his “solid centripetal counterweight” consistently in both rhetoric and actions. He literally paid with his life for his political courage. The September 22, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation and December 8, 1863, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction to integrate successionist states back into the Union represent two of Lincoln’s strong efforts at moderation and balance within the context of an actual, and not metaphorical, Civil War.   

President Biden is in no such danger. American politics has crossed the Rubicon. However, this war is being fought for cultural and political supremacy on the battlefields of the country’s civic and cultural institutions nationwide. To date, there have been no military battles, invasions, and occupations. In that sense, President Biden’s path to creating a real “solid centripetal counterweight” to the forces pushing the country apart is easier. All he needs to do is combine the right words with forceful moderation in his actual policies.

 

He has not yet forcefully done so. As a result, the question seems not whether President Biden will become a Lincoln or even a Ford, but tragically, given what our country needs, an Edsel.