“A Late Model Lincoln”
“Enduring Wisdom in an Ivory Tower”
By
William O’Shaughnessy 

A wet, stifling summer heat hung over the great city as Mario Cuomo sat in his corner office at the Willkie, Farr and Gallagher law firm high up on the 42^nd floor of the Equitable building in Manhattan.

The grand statesman, orator and conscience of American Democrats is 71.  On the office wall hung mementos of his 12 years in Albany when he was governor of the Empire State.  Even now it is impossible to be around Mario Cuomo without also wishing he had listened to the urging and importunings of the elders of his party to run for president.  His young partners at the big international law firm also believe the man in the corner office would have been a magnificent justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But here on this summer day the liberal Democrat sat during his lunch hour talking about the Patron Saint of Republicans – Abraham Lincoln, who is one of Cuomo’s heroes. The Governor and famed Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer are working on another book about Mr. Lincoln, which will come out about the same time you are reading this.  Cuomo and Holzer previously collaborated on “Lincoln on Democracy,” a 1990 anthology of the slain president’s writings which was published in many languages.  As he fashioned words for his new book, this is what Mario Cuomo told a visitor

“Abraham Lincoln is at once our most popular president.  He is also the most used … and abused … by scholars, historians and contemporary speakers.  Everyone knows of his humble roots, his strength during the terrible war between the states when he had to deal with a whole range of life and death issues like war and slavery and equality.  900,000 Americans died during those four years.  And then there was his martyrdom. 

But most of all we are attracted to Lincoln because of his wisdom.  It is an enduring wisdom that speaks for all the ages, a wisdom that transcends the evolving realities of the day.  He had this magnificent eloquence.  Nobody wrote like he did.  He was constantly dealing on a very high moral plane during all the days of his life.  That eloquence, that wisdom resounds to this day and speaks to us and instructs us still.  No president in our history has ever received the admiration, reverence or the near sanctification Abraham Lincoln has received. More books have been written about him, more articles, more newspaper columns, more movies … than any other figure in our history. 

Why is Lincoln so popular?  Is it his upbringing … the way he rose up from a log cabin to the White House – which appeals to me and to most Americans … that somewhere in our bloodline there is the pioneer spirit we still respond to?  Is it the achievement of having kept the nation together after the Civil War?  Is it the beginning of the end of slavery that he’s responsible for?  Is it all those things, plus an incredible wisdom that emanated from him and the magnificent words he used both orally and in his writings to explain his position on the most profound issues … the equality of all men and women … making the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence the reality of the Constitution? 

The Constitution, as we all know it, wasn’t nearly as lofty in its achievements as the Declaration was in its aspiration.  In my new book, our second on Lincoln, we talk about today’s problems: Iraq, terrorism, the military tribunal, the problem of poverty in the world and even in the United States of America.   After we list the problems we  add  what  we  believe  Lincoln  would say  about the

problems if he were confronted with them now.  Obviously some of them are of a specific nature that he could have hardly imagined …  like cloning or abortion.  Or even Internet communication.  So there are a lot of specifics in our daily list of challenges that the great Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to imagine.  But it’s hard for me to imagine any problem at all that the great sweep of his logic and common sense wouldn’t have reached in some form. 

Specifically, he has many views on war and when one should go to war.  And even specifically on “preemptive” war … like what has now been described by some as the first truly “preemptive” war declaration by the United States of America against Iraq.  And the question of globalization and how he felt about international relationships … how he felt about the distribution of assets in this country.  The gap between the wealthiest people in America and everybody else is growing rapidly and in a very divisive and fragmenting way.  CEO’s are now paid 300 times what workers are paid.  Not long ago it was only ten times what the workers were paid.  Here is an astonishing number: 400 Americans at the very top average $175 million dollars a year!  That’s $69 billion!  The average wage is $42,OOO in this country. 

How would Lincoln feel about gay marriages?  Some representatives of the gay community have recently claimed him as one of their own because he traveled the circuit as a lawyer and in those days the few hotels and rooming houses they had as you traveled from town to town were often packed and men often had to double up.  What’s your guess as to what Lincoln would have said about gay marriages?  We’re not going to pretend that he thought specifically about all the problems we’re thinking about now. 

Every politician on every side appears to take for granted that a connection to Lincoln is good for them - whether it was Eisenhower, the Republican; or Reagan, the Republican; or Roosevelt, the Democrat; or Clinton, the Democrat; or Wilson, the Democrat.  Everyone has a picture of Lincoln on his wall.   Lincoln was called a Republican.   But the Republicans  of Lincoln’s  day  were

more like the Democrats of today.  And the Democrats of Lincoln’s day were more like the Republicans of today. 

As for 9/11 and why the Muslims would attack us … Lincoln said a lot about wars and how he never saw a war he would want to get into unless he was absolutely forced to … and how he was against “preemptive” war, how he was against invading another nation on the theory  we were afraid they were about to invade us which is precisely what we did in Iraq.  He answered that question very specifically and said he would be against it and how you should deal with people after you defeat them in a war and how you should try to embrace them and make them friendly as the best protection against them wanting to go to war against you again. 

Abraham Lincoln said an awful lot that would be useful today, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.  He has been called all sorts of things over the ages.  He’s been called a conservative by people like Jack Kemp and Lou Lehrman.   Lincoln scholars have written of him as the great liberal.  David Donald, who wrote the book that won all the prizes just a few years ago, said Lincoln was proud to call himself a liberal president.  And J.R. Randall, the great Lincoln scholar, wrote a whole book: “Lincoln, The Liberal Statesman” .  Those labels don’t really fit, neither conservative or liberal.  I would say there is no label flexible enough and wide enough- reaching to embrace the magnificent riddle that was Lincoln.  He was much more complicated than any label will allow you to be.  The Lincoln who called himself first a Whig and then a Republican, imposed upon the people of the United States of America the first income tax.  Not only did he impose the first income tax, he did it unconstitutionally.  How do you like them apples? 

Why does his wisdom survive?  Why does the wisdom of the Founding Fathers survive?  Why does the wisdom of the Old Testament survive?  Why does Confusian wisdom survive?  Why does Buddhist wisdom survive?  Some things are true, timelessly.  And Abraham Lincoln had the ability to think profoundly about the most basic, sweeping and important moral principles.  There are two great bodies of belief written in our early days.  One, the Declaration of Independence.   And the second, the Constitution.  The Constitution - as Lincoln well knew, because he was a wonderful lawyer - is a set of laws and rules and has the force of law you must live by it.  The Declaration of Independence has no force as law. It was nothing more than a declaration of aspiration by the Founding Fathers.  But in it, they said things Lincoln believed were on a higher level of morality than the Constitution.  The Constitution did not create an equal society. It created a slave-ridden society and absolutely assured that slavery would stay in place at least for a while.  The Declaration of Independence prayed for and committed the country to equality without slavery.  Lincoln’s beliefs were at the level of the Declaration of Independence, not at the reduced level of the Constitution.  That was his aspiration.  That was what he talked about and that’s what he prayed for.  That’s what he fought for and that’s what this country believes in even more than it believes in the Constitution.  It believes in what we should have been much sooner  and what we can be.  The Declaration talks about self-evident truths.  Self-evident means you don’t need a tablet and a man in a gown with a beard coming down a mountain to deliver it to you like Moses.  Self evident means you don’t need a church, you don’t need a book, you don’t need a history or a school, you don’t even need an ancestor to tell you.  You figure it out for yourself that all men are equal.  That it is better for us to love one another than not to.  We all have the right to proceed as long as we don’t hurt anybody else in achieving our own destiny.  We have our own version of happiness and belief and trust and love.  That’s the Declaration of Independence.  That’s what he believed in.  That’s the highest level of belief in this country and that’s why we respond to Lincoln … because that’s the level of which he spoke to us, timelessly, transcending all the changing realities evolving on a day to day basis … day to day, year to year, century to century.  Timeless wisdom.  We understand it.  We respect it.  That’s why we love Lincoln. 

Lincoln also had a unique ability to craft arguments of raw power and breathtaking beauty … and to argue with the seamless logic of a great lawyer, and the large heart of a great humanitarian.  He produced unforgettable words that his mind sharpened into steel and his heart softened into an embrace.”

Walking to the elevator, after listening to Mario Cuomo talk about his latest paean to Abraham Lincoln, it occurred to me that practically everything the New York lawyer with too many vowels in his name said about the great Lincoln could easily apply to Cuomo himself.

I almost held the elevator to tell him.  But when it arrived on the 42^nd floor, I got in and pressed “*L” as  Mario Cuomo went back to continue writing his love letter to a tall, craggy man who died 138 years ago and left us only with a national holiday and some wisdom which endures in gorgeous words.

But as I walked across town to meet Nancy Curry, my mind kept drifting back to Mario Cuomo with the thought that maybe God is not yet quite finished with the former baseball player who grew up behind a grocery store in Queens and was to be found this day up in a Manhattan ivory tower trying to apply the words and wisdom of a president who came out of a log cabin in Illinois to the challenges of our modern age.

I’m not the only one thinking about Cuomo.  After surveying all the stellar aspirants currently vying so brilliantly for the Democratic nomination, a reporter for a national publication visited the former governor a few weeks ago and wrote a column which concluded, “The Democrats could do a lot worse than nominate this 71-year-old.”

Cuomo’s web site Excelsior.com is being bombarded by the same notion, mostly from those who’ve heard the stem-winding talks the passionate lawyer is delivering these days on college campuses and lecture halls all over the country.  Cuomo has even taken his message abroad, telling a group of Italian business leaders last week, “God created the Earth, but didn’t finish it.  That’s your job – to be partners in creation.  We are all in this together and interconnected.  Love your neighbor.” 

I’ve heard a few of these stem-winding speeches myself – most recently at Iona College, where the president – a Christian Brother named Liguori – called him ‘the greatest thinker of the 20^th century’ … and at the Bedford Democratic dinner, where Cuomo recited for a room full of well-healed WASPs some wise, simple instruction from the ancient Hebrews: ‘You are all children of one God … entitled to dignity and respect from one another.’  (Tzedakah) and, again ‘Repair the universe’ (Tikun Olam).

In the summer of 2003, Mario Cuomo and Lincoln work the same territory. 

They’re both … still around.

William O’Shaughnessy is the author of “AirWaves” (1999) and “It All Comes Back to Me Now” (2001), published by Fordham University Press.  His latest book “Live! From the Golden Apple”, an anthology of life in New York State, is due Spring, 2004 from Fordham Press.

Contact: 

Cindy Hall Gallagher

914-235-3279

cindy@wvox.com

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