Confronting Cataclysm: Obama and Lincoln

A few months ago I was struck by the following statement by Professor Cornel West on Real Time with Bill Maher: “It’s time for more than just a president. What we need is a statesman. We need another Lincoln." There have been many comparisons of Lincoln and Obama during the course of his campaign and transition, and there will surely be more during the course of his presidency. There are many similarities between them: both came from Illinois, both are known for the power of their speeches, both sought in different ways to follow a middle path, and of course, Lincoln ended slavery, paving the way for the struggle that, in a sense, culminated in today's inauguration of the United States' first African-American president.

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, titled "A Pragmatic Precedent", Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and John Stauffer write:

"Is Barack Obama another Abraham Lincoln? Let’s hope not. Greatness — witness the presidencies of Lincoln, say, and Franklin D. Roosevelt — is forged in the crucible of disaster. It comes when character is equal to cataclysm. A peacetime Lincoln would have been no Lincoln at all. Let’s hope that Mr. Obama, for all of his considerable gifts, doesn’t get this particular chance to be great."

A very different argument against embracing Obama as the next Lincoln, is advanced in an article by Carlos Fierro, titled "An Anarchist View of Elections" which appeared on Counterpunch around the same time as Dr. West's appearance on Real Time, and reacts to comments he made elsewhere lauding Obama as a potentially Lincolnesque figure. Fierro argues that electoral politics are a distraction from real activism, and that the Obama's campaign has sapped energy from, for example, the anti-war movement. He asserts that real change has never come through elections but through popular movements, and warns against the embrace of an idealized Obama as the solution to all of our problems. Citing Dr. West's statement that “there is no Abe Lincoln becoming a statesmen without Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Beecher Stowe,” Fierro argues as follows:

"We don’t need another Lincoln, or an Obama; what we need is more Fredrick Douglasses and Harriet Beecher Stowes. We need more Martin Luther Kings, Big Bill Haywoods, and Helen Kellers. We don’t need more FDRs, we need more Eugene Debs. We don’t need more JFKs, we need more Philip Berrigans. We don’t need to look to great men to lead us to the promised land, we need to recognize the power that we, the nameless and 'the powerless,' possess when we assert our power rather than make assertions of faith directed at the great leader myths."

While I find the general dismissal of electoral change which is a characteristic of certain segments of the left misguided, I agree with Mr. Fierro that progressive change in this country has not been handed down by benevolent leaders; it has come about through the struggles of activists and agitators whose contributions are often forgotten, and who wrested change from an often resistant government. I do not believe it follows, however, that "we don't need another Lincoln, or an Obama."

Activism does not in and of itself change anything. There were demonstrations immediately preceding the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the only response they evoked from then-President Bush was a statement that he "doesn't govern by focus group." Activists change things by pressuring those in government to respond to them, or by creating enough popular support for a position to replace politicians who will not respond with those who will. President Bush dismissed those who demonstrated against the invasion of Iraq. His replacement, President Obama, opposed the invasion of Iraq and has stated an intention to withdraw U.S. troops from the country, albeit slowly. During the Democratic primaries, Senator Clinton argued that her vote, essentially to authorize the invasion of Iraq, was based on false intelligence and that nobody could have known that Iraq was not really a threat to us. While it is impossible to know what impact activism actually had on public perception at that time, any astute observer could see that tens of thousands of people had in fact believed strongly enough that the invasion was unnecessary, to take to the streets.

This discussion, I hope, casts the statement in "A Pragmatic Precedent" , that we should hope Obama does not face a cataclysmic event that would enable him to achieve greatness in the way that Lincoln and F.D.R. did, in a new light. The Civil War did not suddenly strike Lincoln. While he did not set out to plunge the country into civil war, there were principles he was unwilling to give up in order to prevent it. Few would argue that the enslavement of human beings is not a cataclysmic occurrence, or that the existence of legal slavery in one's own country is disastrous. Yet, each President before Lincoln faced this disaster and failed to end it. There are disasters in the United States today, some of which were created by the previous administration, but most of which significantly predate it. These include that in this wealthiest of countries, more than ten percent of the population lives in poverty, that people are legally executed for crimes while potential evidence of their innocence is willfully ignored, and that members of certain minority groups are still legally denied basic civil rights. President Obama will be remembered by history as the first African-American to hold that office, and presumably if the wish of "A Pragmatic Precedent's" authors comes true, little else. Obama need only plot a safe course for his presidency, choosing not to acknowledge problems like those listed above as the disasters they are.

Despite all the attention he has received in the last few years, President Obama is still something of an unknown quantity. While many of his stated positions, some of his Senate votes, and some of his cabinet appointments, seem at odds with a truly progressive agenda for change, the truth is we don't really know what he will do. We do know that he opted to take a job as a community organizer in Chicago in lieu of a high-paying job in corporate law, and has emphasized the importance of ordinary people throughout his campaign. We can hope this means that he will be more receptive to pressure from progressive activism. To dismiss Obama as just another Democratic President who will change nothing of substance is to dismiss a potentially enormous opportunity. It has been suggested that Obama looks to Lincoln for inspiration. Those who look instead to Frederick Douglas and Eugene Victor Debs for inspiration should seek to create a popular movement for change that will allow Obama to enact a progressive agenda if that is his intention, and pressure him to do so if it is not. It may be that Obama's presidency is an opportunity for this generation's activists and agitators to enact real change by helping or forcing Obama to face the disasters of our time head on. The greatness of Obama's presidency may well depend on the efforts of activists to frame the country's problems as the disasters they are, and demand that they be met head on.