Lincoln, Obama and Stressed Out Presidents

As David von Drehle has noted in Rise To Greatness, Lincoln is our greatest President because he had the greatest challenges to overcome. 

Nobody is seriously moving to leave the Union, taking up arms, firing on Fort Sumter, enslaving a third of the population and insisting this is God's will, appealing to European powers to enter a war against Washington, and for all its faults, Washington, DC is not stinking in pestilence, with typhoid claiming the lives of the Presidential family, , with an armed enemy just across the Potomac, blocking egress along the river, with unpaved streets knee deep in mud and animal droppings, spittoons in the lobbies of hotels, carpets stained with tobacco spit, and a Supreme Court having endorsed slavery.

The one thing Mr. Obama might envy as he casts his eyes back to Mr. Lincoln's circumstances:  By 1862, the disloyal opposition had already left town, and Congress, while still comprised of Democrats and Republicans, was basically of one mind. The only arguments were about how far to go, now that meaningful opposition to abolition of slavery had left town.

While it remains stupefying to listen to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner still singing the Republican chorus-- "We must address our fiscal problems, our deficit by cutting spending.  We will only alienate the job creators if we do not cut taxes for everybody (i.e. including the upper 1%.) and the road to recovery is through cutting spending and taxes"--these oppositional types are only slow learners. They have yet to figure out they lost the election. For them, what is important is that they retained control of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats can, if they choose, focus their fire on individual Republican leaders--McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, Demint--and de legitimize them as they did with Mr. Romney, and eventually they will cave.

The only question now is how long it will take Mr. Obama to learn the lessons of Debate #1--you need to attack when you are blocked by a dug in opposition. And when you attack, you win.  When you listen and try to act all bi partisan, you lose, and you look stupid and ineffectual in the process.

In Lincoln's time, he was more hurt by his friends than by his enemies. His generals simply refused to fight--McClellan, Buell, Halleck all had constant excuses and reasons for their own inaction.  Finally, Lincoln found some generals who worried more about inaction than the risks of action, and that was his path to greatness. Lincoln knew what he wanted, but he dithered about getting there. He was unwilling to  forthrightly break with those who blocked up the hall.  

President Obama has the same proclivity with which his predecessor from Illinois was afflicted--the willingness to tolerate stalling.