krebscycle

Obama’s famous speech in which he says there are no red states, no blue states, just the United States,  and his other pleas for unity are incessantly derided by people who appear not to have basic language skills. Here’s the last paragraph of President Lincoln’s speech at his first inaugural.

 I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The Confederacy was in open rebellion as the new President spoke. And he had been subjected to the most bitter vilification imaginable for the whole campaign.  And yet, in his inaugural, Lincoln offers the most craven appeal to the rebels, including a commitment to enforce the loathsome Fugitive Slave Act before arriving at  “we are not enemies but friends”. Was Lincoln naive? In denial?

In fact, in a speech years earlier, Lincoln had crisply explained to an abolitionist audience that no compromise was possible – that the South was incapable of tolerating any difference of opinion on slavery.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us

President Lincoln was no more a fool than President Obama.  The purpose of political speech is – imagine this – political. In his inaugural speech, Lincoln was attempting, with some success, to sell himself as a centrist, a reasonable figure who would bend over backwards to find unity. He was not appealing to Confederate slavery zealots, in vain. He was appealing to southerners who then resisted the draft, who rebelled against the rebels, who kept the border states in the union, who joined the union Army. Lincoln was appealing to the large population in the North that was racist or who believed that the union could be preserved by further compromise. He was trying to win.

Mr. Obama, whose big legislative victories depended on right wing Democrats like the odious Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln and on Democrats from red states like Mary Landrieu was not attempting to sell unity and national togetherness to people like Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz. Obama was trying to cement a Democratic coalition that could win and trying to sell himself to waverers as representing the center. He was attempting to sell the opposition as extremists, unreasonable people who valued partisanship over patriotism. And, it has to a large extent worked – despite racism, despite a nearly uniformly hostile press, despite massive expenditures of right wing billionaires and corporate PR firms.

None of this is rocket science. The mystery is why it’s so difficult for critics to grasp. Surely some of the difficulty comes from the learned helplessness of liberal and left America – after decades of defeat finding comfort and familiarity in “principled” losing where compromise is not necessary. Because winning for the good guys in this kind of system always involves ugly compromise. And part is surely reflexive racism – it’s apparently easier to yell about how stupid the black guy is than to think about what he is doing. But it’s all damn annoying.