David Brooks wrote a column earlier this week, ruminating about changing attitudes towards authority. “Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.”
Brooks uses the Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments as metaphors
for the expression of just authority-“strong and powerful, but also humanized”. These were men who used their power in the
service of higher ideals, and the physical structures reflect that. He contrasts that with the more inward, more self-centered,
less expressive modern monuments of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, King, and the War
memorials.
Brooks can get carried away with himself, and the metaphor
is strained, but he is on to something here. There
is an ocean of difference between unquestioning acceptance of authority that
goes along with a hierarchical structure and reflexive opposition to anyone in
leadership who voices even the smallest degree of independence. We are living in an era where we spend a
great deal of time thumbing our nose at authority-particularly authority exercised
by members of the opposing party. And we
do it in the name of common sense-our common sense, because if it is clear to
us, it should be clear to them.
This is not new; in the 19th Century we had a
codification movement-every man could be a lawyer or judge if the laws were
written simply enough. Whole political
careers were built on “simple truths”-there’s a brilliant biographical essay on
William Jennings Bryan by the late Richard Hofstadter that portrays Bryan not
just as the “common man”, but as a
common man, undistinguished in thought or idea, holding to simple concepts, a
great voice for an unexceptional mind.
Unfortunately, the 2012 election already seems irrevocably
closed to the marketplace of ideas. Mr.
Obama has been a disappointment-yes, he has real accomplishments, and yes, the
Republicans, motivated by blind hatred and crass opportunism, have done
whatever they could to see him fail, even at the cost of the nation’s well
being. But with all that, he has fallen
well short of our expectations-he could do better, if we demanded it. Mr.
Romney seems nothing more than a chameleon man, ready to invest in whatever
principles bring him the maximum electoral return. He wants the job; he will do and say what it
takes to get it. His passion seems to be
for winning, not for using power in the service of higher ideals. He, also, could do better, if we demanded
it. But we don’t, so there is no titanic contest
of ideas here.
Brooks’ piece reminded me of another Lincoln Memorial, far smaller
and less well known. It was erected in
1876, with the contributions coming entirely from freed slaves, many who served
in the Union Army, and is formally called the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to
Abraham Lincoln. The statue itself is
unremarkable and even controversial, with its depiction of a former slave at
Lincoln’s feet. Frederick Douglass, the
escaped slave turned reformer, abolitionist, writer and statesmen, spoke at the
dedication.
Douglass gave a speech like none other I can think of. Douglass did not just praise, but criticized,
sometimes harshly. Lincoln, he said, was
“preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of
white men.” Lincoln held many of the prejudices
of his time. Lincoln would have
sacrificed the slave’s freedom if he could have preserved the Union. Lincoln was late in delivering the
Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was “ready
and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny,
postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote
the welfare of the white people of this country.” At length, and in great
detail, Douglass goes on, a litany of Lincoln’s failures and flaws.
And yet, Douglass draws back. He takes Lincoln’s measure, he judges the man
in the context of his time and the impossible challenges of his office. “I
have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices
common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times
and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this
unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his
wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous
conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great
mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from
dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime
of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy
and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this
primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and
utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of
the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the
American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from
the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and
indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he
was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and
determined.”
How did Lincoln do this?
How did he get past the “voice of doubt and fear all around him?” Douglass answers his own question. Lincoln, “had an oath in heaven, and there
was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and
broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. The trust
that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand,
but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his
truth was based upon this knowledge.”
With less than five months to go before the election, I wish
Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney would take a few minutes, read the words of Frederick
Douglass, and talk to us all like adults.
If they do, perhaps they may draw the comforts of history,
or as Douglass says, “The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly
discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole
duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course
to the silent judgment of time.”
It worked for Lincoln.
MM
