Learning While Leading
The most important lesson Lincoln could teach Obama is that he will need to school himself.
By Ronald C. White Jr.
At
the risk of disabusing the messianic comparisons of the qualities that
Lincoln and Obama brought full-blown to the presidency, what is being
missed is how much Lincoln taught himself to be president on the job.
Painfully aware of his own shortcomings - in administrative abilities
and military understanding, to name but two - the success of Lincoln's
presidency lay not simply in the nature of his political genius,
nurtured as both a politician and lawyer in Illinois, but in the hard
work he expended day after wearing day in the White House. In the years
after his death, Lincoln's Illinois friends formed a harmonious chorus
- "we knew it all the time" - but in truth many were surprised at how
fast and far "Old Abe" grew into being president.
Lincoln came to
the presidency, as does Obama, with a lack of executive familiarity,
and Lincoln's first few weeks in office did not inspire confidence that
he could launch and run a new administration. Lincoln was well aware of
his own administrative inexperience. At first he tried to carry out
everything by himself. He acknowledged to an old Illinois friend his
initial floundering. "When [I] first commenced doing the duties, [I]
was entirely ignorant not only of the duties, but of the manner of
doing the business" of the presidency. His young secretary John Hay
remembered, "There was little order or system about it." He reported,
"Those around him strove from beginning to end to erect barriers to
defend him against constant interruption, but the President himself was
always the first to break them down." Sen. Henry Wilson of
Massachusetts once tried to counsel the president about his
availability to people: "You will wear yourself out." Lincoln replied,
"They don't want much; they get but little, and I must see them."
Lincoln
learned to be a more than competent administrator. He continued to hold
frequent public hours where he could hear the points of view of
ordinary people - what he called his "public opinion baths" - but he
became skilled at prioritizing his most important tasks. After an
initial tussle over who would be king of the hill, he and Secretary of
State William Seward developed an amiable and productive working
relationship. As the chief lawyer in the White House, Lincoln often
asked his cabinet members, almost all lawyers, to submit written briefs
in response to critical questions to be decided. He gained the respect
of his colleagues by listening to and learning from their opinions,
even when their ideas differed from his. He became well aware that
Salmon P. Chase, one of his rivals for the Republican nomination in
1860, was criticizing him behind his back, but Lincoln said he had
"determined to shut his eyes to all these performances" because he
believed Chase to be quite good at his job as secretary of the
Treasury. Although Lincoln endured complaints that the cabinet did not
meet often enough, Lincoln more than made up for this by his leadership
style of walking around -visiting cabinet officials as well as Gen.
George McClellan at their offices and even their homes.
Second,
Lincoln came to the presidency keenly conscious of his limited military
experience. In the Black Hawk War in 1832 he served for three months
as a private and a captain. Obama brings no military experience. By
contrast, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, had graduated
from West Point, commanded a regiment in the Mexican War and served
with distinction as secretary of war from 1853 to 1857.
As
commander in chief Lincoln understood that he faced a steep learning
curve. Yet his whole adult life had consisted of self-education. and he
welcomed the challenge. Just as he had become a self-taught lawyer in
rural Illinois, he now set out to teach himself military theory and
strategy. Following the humiliating defeat at the Battle of Bull Run in
July 1861, Lincoln turned his full attention to the military strategy
that would carry out his national policy. A day after Bull Run, Lincoln
wrote out the lessons to be learned from defeat. As summer turned into
fall he began to assume responsibilities that had never been wielded
before by an American president. By November Hay wrote, "The President
is himself a man of great aptitude for military studies." By now
Lincoln was so present at the War Department that "many of the orders
issuing from the War Department are penned by the hand of the
President." In December his secretary John G. Nicolay observed that
Lincoln "gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military
situation. He read a large number of strategical works. He pored over
the reports from the various departments and districts of the field of
war. He held long conferences with eminent generals and admirals, and
astonished them by the extent of his special knowledge." Increasingly
the books piling up on the long cabinet table in his office became
military books. By early 1862 he would become a knowledgeable, hands-on
commander in chief determined that military strategy and generals would
serve the larger ends of national policy.
In predicting how a
president-elect will perform as a president, there are many indicators
that can be gleaned from the past. James Buchanan, Lincoln's immediate
predecessor, who served 20 years in the House and Senate and had been
both secretary of state and minister to Russia, brought enormous
political experience, but he failed to grow into the job and proved to
be a weak and ineffectual president.
Toward the conclusion of his
reflection on the Constitution in "The Audacity of Hope," Obama states,
"I am left then with Lincoln." The remarkable personal tether that
Obama has long felt toward Abraham Lincoln blossomed into public view
at the beginning of his candidacy in Springfield, Ill., on a cold day
in February 2007, and at the conclusion of the presidential campaign in
his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago on Nov. 4, 2008. Since then
their parallel personal traits, seen most visibly in their eloquent
speaking abilities, have become well known. In this year of the Lincoln
bicentennial, Lincoln continues to fascinate Obama and us because he
eludes simple definitions and final judgments. If one had made a
judgment on Lincoln as administrator in 1862, or commander in chief in
1863, the verdict would have been negative by many, including leaders
of his own party, and mixed at best. But Lincoln was still learning his
job. The jury is about to be seated that will hear the evidence about
lawyer and legislator Obama as administrator and commander in chief. He
knows more than anyone else there is much yet to learn from Lincoln.
Ronald
C. White, Jr. is the author "A. Lincoln: A Biography" and a visiting
professor of history at UCLA. His previous books include "Lincoln's
Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural" and "The Eloquent President: A
Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words."
