The Better Angels of our Nature

With just a little more than a week to go before President-elect Obama’s inauguration, talk continues on the comparisons between March 4, 1861 and January 20, 2009. We have heard for quite some time about Obama following Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” selection approach for his cabinet. Now comes word that Obama will be sworn in on the Bible used at Lincoln’s inauguration nearly 150 years ago.

But, of course, there’s more. Both Lincoln and Obama hail from Illinois; both served in Congress for only a brief period of time before winning the Presidency; both were relatively young when Click on image to enlarge

elected - Lincoln was 51, Obama is 47. And, less well known is this remarkable American history connection:

Obama takes over as the nation’s 44th President less than three weeks before the bicentennial anniversary of the Great Emancipator’s birth (February 12, 1809).

What will resonate from Obama’s Inaugural Address? His reputation for verbal eloquence and inspirational rhetoric already is well deserved. As he ponders theme, content, phraseology and presentation, the president-elect would do well to emulate his eminent predecessor. Lincoln addressed a divided country on that blustery Monday in March. Seven states had already seceded from the Union; the Civil War would begin with the attack on Fort Sumter the following month. Lincoln’s most memorable phrase from the First Inaugural fell on deaf ears, at least at the time. Pleading for reconciliation short of war, the President asserted: “the mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

President-elect Obama will surely need the better (and smarter) angels of our nature from January 20th onward. But the United States has been blessed, repeatedly, by right leadership at the right time – think Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Reagan during the dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe. And, as we know, in the journey we call America, the government remains, as Lincoln himself noted, of the people, for the people, and by the people. The people have endorsed Obama at the polls -- now, looking forward, may our collective better angels prevail for him and for the nation.