Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Abraham Lincoln, by George McGovern

George McGovern was the first person I voted for for President. He did not do well (a penchant for third-party candidates--Eugene McCarthy in 1976 and John Anderson in 1980--and another bad year for democrats in 1984 meant I was more than 20 years into my voting career before I voted for anyone who carried more than one state).

Nonetheless, I was reminded of some of the reasons I admired Senator McGovern when I heard him speak at the Illinois state law-related education conference last fall. Despite being well into his eighties, he is still working tirelessly to make the world a better place--and he's doing it in collaboration with an old colleague and rival, Senator Bob Dole. The two are working on a project to make a free school lunch available to every child in the world. Despite serving in the wartime military, suffering political defeats, and losing a child to alcoholism, he is an optimist who still believes in democracy and people's capacity to rise to its demands. And he's a scholar--holding a PhD in history and government from Northwestern.

All these traits--plus his enduring admiration for Abraham Lincoln--make him a natural choice to write the bio of Lincoln for "The American Presidents" series. The volume is slim, but reminds us of the magnitude of Lincoln's achievements (though McGovern does, with apparent pain, take Lincoln to task for his suspension of constitutional rights during the Civil War). Having spent some time last year examining primary source documents in preparing teaching tools for a collection of Lincolniana at the Library of Congress and writing a lesson on Lincoln to mark the bicentennial of his birth, I still got new insight into Lincoln's leadership by reading McGovern's synthesis of his presidency. For young people especially, this title would provide an excellent introduction to one of our greatest presidents.

Favorite passage:
In Lincoln we see the essence of leadership. He inspired a people and an army by steady, measured resolve. He mobilized and energized the nation by appealing to the best and highest of ideals; that is, he convinced the nation that "a more perfect Union"--a Union of justice and freedom--was worth fighting for.

No comments:

Post a Comment