Over the past few days, President-Elect Obama has come under fire for inviting a controversial pastor to deliver the invocation at his upcoming inauguration on 20 January 2009. While gay-rights activists decry the pastor's stance against gay-marriage, others are disturbed by his comparison of abortion with the holocaust..
In response to the shrill criticism, Obama has rightly asserted that the common ground between liberals and conservatives is much greater than the differences. Regardless of one's ideological bent, all Americans want to build a better future based on love, hope, sacrifice, charity and compassion. While the means to a 'more perfect union' may differ among a range of worldviews, the ends are the same. Unfortunately, Obama's appeal to reason has largely failed to quiet the chorus of opposition to the presence of the pastor.
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No presidential inauguration has ever occurred without strains of tension, rivalry, bitterness and resentment. How should Obama proceed? As a student of Abraham Lincoln, the President-Elect should glean ideas of how to transcend politics on his historic day by reviewing the course taken by his idol.
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Lincoln's thoughts in the days and nights before his 4 March 1861 inauguration must have turned on the question of how to conduct himself amid the presence of not one but two incendiary figures.
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The first one, Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861), was invited by Lincoln to attend despite being his principle political foe in Illinois for much of the 1850s. Known as the 'Little Giant', the diminutive Douglas, standing a mere 5'4" tall, was a force in national politics as well. In fact, his orchestration of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which opened up both territories to the possibility of becoming slave states by popular vote, roused Lincoln from his life as a successful lawyer and family man in Springfield to oppose the extension of slavery. On the afternoon of 16 October of that year, Douglas defended his legislation before an intensely engaged crowd in Peoria, Illinois. When he finished, the people called for Lincoln to appear and present his case against the bill. Between 6:00-7:00pm, Lincoln began a 3-hour harangue against Douglas' plan of 'popular sovereignty' - which was designed to allow the people of upcoming states to vote on being a slave or free state by a simple majority.
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On 16 June 1858, Lincoln made his famous 'House Divided' speech in Springfield. In the oration, he boldly accused Douglas of being in a political cabal with President James Buchanan, former President Franklin Pierce and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (pronounced 'Taw-ney') in subverting the constitution to serve the slave interests of the South stating, 'We find it impossible not to believe that Stephen (Douglas) and Franklin (Pierce) and Roger (Taney) and James (Buchanan) all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.'
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His reference to Chief Justice Taney was in regard to his written decision on the Dred Scott v. Sanford case a year earlier. Dred Scott, a slave, petitioned the court for his release on the grounds that his owner had moved from Missouri - a slave state - to the free Wisconsin territory. When Taney unequivocally denied his claim and asserted that blacks were neither citizens nor had any legal rights, it set off a firestorm in the North. What about the thousands of free blacks living in New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere? Lincoln's intuition was correct. President-Elect Buchanan had indeed improperly discussed the Dred Scott case with the Chief Justice in the days before his inauguration on 4 March 1857. The decision was conveniently handed-down two days later.
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In August 1858, Lincoln and Douglas squared off for the first of seven debates in seven Illinois cities on the question of slavery in a fight for Douglas' senate seat. The incumbent (Douglas) was re-elected by the state legislature (direct election of US senators would not occur until 1913), but Lincoln gained a national reputation as a prominent leader for putting slavery 'on the road to ultimate extinction'.
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Three contentious years passed, and Lincoln emerged victorious in the 1860 election due to a split between the Northern Democrats led by Stephen Douglas and the Southern Democrats led by John Breckinridge of Kentucky. Lincoln received only a plurality of the vote and watched seven states, beginning with South Carolina on 20 December, secede from the Union. Two weeks before the start of his presidency, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first President of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. Lincoln was unflappable in the crisis.
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Due to his magnanimous civility, Lincoln warmly invited Douglas to attend the inaugural. Clearly, some Lincoln supporters must have been uncomfortable if not outraged at the invitation of a man Lincoln once claimed was part of conspiracy to extend the power of the South. What could the man with the famous stove-pipe hat have been be thinking? Lincoln's greatness was his ability to see the larger picture of human affairs. Senator Douglas loved America, but he had gotten caught up on the wrong side of politics and history. Indeed, Douglas had begun to move in Lincoln's direction after the election. When Lincoln rose to give his inaugural speech, Douglas offered to hold his trademark hat. It was more than a courteous gesture. The 'Little Giant' staunchly opposed secession of the South and would spend the last months of his life on a speaking tour against disunion. By not allowing past political contests to become personal, Lincoln kept Douglas a friend and gained an ally.
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On a similar note, a potentially awkward moment of Lincoln taking the oath of office from Chief Justice Taney, another of Lincoln's alleged members of a pro-Southern conspiracy, passed without incident. Both men fulfilled their respective roles with grace and cordiality, and the sizable crowd, which had gathered before a half-finished capitol dome, watched with both trepidation and joy at another democratic transfer of power.
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As Lincoln invited Stephen A. Douglas, his foremost political adversary who wished to allow the extension of the most degrading institution in human history, and took the presidential oath from a man who declared blacks mere property with neither citizenship nor rights, then President-Elect Obama ought to emulate his example by reaching out to all Americans irrespective of their political views. Gentle persuasion and diplomacy can indeed change hearts and minds, and as Lincoln said at the conclusion of his first inaugural address, 'We are not enemies, but friends.'
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J Roquen