In 1858, a man stood up and walked to the lectern at the front of the assembled dignitaries of the Illinois Republican party.
Three hours previous, the assemblage had appointed him their candidate for the United States Senate.
In his acceptance speech, this man – in his high reedy voice – would famously paraphrase Jesus's words in Matthew chapter 12: "…
every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."
He was talking about slavery, of course. And he lost that election… according to many at the time, he was doomed from the outset because of the political incorrectness of that speech which went on to forecast the coming storm. As every schoolchild knows, he became our 16th president, emancipated the slaves, brought the southern states to heel and was assassinated in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth, who raised the murder weapon before the crowd and shouted "Sic simper tyrranis". The state motto of Virginia then as it is now... "Thus always to tyrants."
Today, we a young black man stepped up to succeed him as president. He began his run on the steps of the old Illinois state capitol building where Lincoln made that speech. And as some have pointed out, he finished his run in Manassas, VA near the battlefield known as Bull Run, the touchpoint of the American Civil War.
As I have repeatedly noted here and elsewhere, we have been quietly fighting a new civil war, one which has been largely fusillades of divisive rhetoric rather than fusillades of musket shot. In this – the longest campaign for president in history – America has stripped itself naked before the entire world, exposing our scars and our still-seeping wounds wrought by wars both figurative and literal, our economic woes ground like glass into the unhealed wounds of the 11th of September seven years past. As the campaign dragged on, we have been forced to come to terms with our feelings about race, gender and age... or refuse to as the case may be.
And here we stand at the touchpoint of another tidal shift in American history. It is quite possible that the energetic young black man who began his campaign in the shadow of Lincoln – in every imaginable sense – has just fulfilled the motto of the state where he concluded his run. And gave new meaning in the minds of the current administrations detractors (myself included)
I admit a degree of shadenfreude that frightens me as I whisper softly 'Sic semper tyrannis' in the wake of two eloquent speeches. One conceding, one accepting the mantle of the presidency. We know he can lead, we know he can speak, can he unify us?
I cannot stress enough the degree to which this campaign season has changed the dynamic of American politics. Whether for the better or the worse remains to be seen. For one thing, this is very likely the end of presidential candidates trying to exist solely on public financing. And the part that alarms me the most... they have driven the wedges ever deeper into the cracks that divide us. Hammered them home for two straight years with speeches invoking words of hatred and division, invoked images of fear and the ineffable other.
On the bright side (and almost ironically) both campaigns have brought women and minorities deeper into the process than every before.
Which brings us back to Lincoln... sort of.
Awhile back I opined that America had embarked upon a "Rhetorical Civil War". It's interesting to me to see that this idea isn't unique to me and has found traction in both the right and left as those few pundits with the clarity of vision to realize what's happening are standing agog, at a loss for how to stop it.
Recent conversations I have had and observed with those I usually consider to be calm and logical thinkers frighten me. The ad hominem attacks both against the candidates and against their opposite number in the argument have escalated. Names have been called. Teeth bared. Crowds in front of Palin and McCain have chanted "Terrorist" and "Bomb Obama" and "McCain, not Hussein", "Get him", and raising in an ever more shrill fashion the specter of otherness that they wrapped around their opponent.
I listened to McCain's concession speech tonight with an air of surprise. This was the man that I admired what seems so many years ago. A man who - had he shown up for the campaign - may yet have won my vote. He spoke well. His words were well-intentioned, I doubt not, and I do not cast any doubts upon his intention to try to heal the wounds of this campaign. It was an honorable speech. But I hoped for more. I still do.
Too late McCain's effort came during the campaign to halt the whispers that Obama was a Muslim. He told that woman that the senator was an honorable man who they need not fear. But I fear it was too late, too little, too inadequate. And no attempt from the firebrand of the campaign who seemed so eager to unleash the rage of the chanting crowds. I look for Palin to help put the pin back in that grenade, but as a resident of the Northwest, I am all too aware of her style, tone and rhetoric and I despair that she recognizes the damage that has been done to the fabric of the republic on this quest for glory.
For most of my life I have watched as political operatives found and focused on specific issues, wedges to drive between the voters. Wedges that are hammered home with such blind zeal that any attempt to repair the broken social security system has been toxic to the career of anyone daring to assay such a thing. It has been called "the third rail of American politics." Abortion, defense spending, the war on drugs, pick your issue and find the single-issue voters who will relentlessly punish the candidate who crosses their involate line, no matter what else the might offer, no matter their intentions, no matter their reasoning...
In a change for me, I have taken an active hand in this election cycle. I have stepped out of the shadows where I have – as a rule – hidden my political opinions for most of my life. I didn't want to get involved. George W Bush and especially Dick Cheney changed that. They tortured people in my name. They broke the constitution, or at least bent it until it began to show stress fractures. And thus will you find it inscribed on the straw atop a broken camel somewhere behind me.
I have engaged. I have fought. I have won and lost and fought to a draw. I clawed with those opposite me in the political spectrum. I have been labeled a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, an elitist, a peacenik, a warmonger, a Jesus freak and many other less pleasant names besides. Some of them are even true.
I have been living on the thin end of the wedge.
About a month ago I realized that if McCain won, my world would not end. And began to notice the conviction with which my opponents were convinced that theirs would if the opposite were true. At that point, I began to come to grips with the core of the issues that divide us, with the dimensions of the gulf that yawns at our feet...
And I do not have the answers. I certainly hope someone does.
One thing I do know: I will continue to speak. That genie is decanted and there is no cork that could reseal that bottle. What is done cannot be undone.
As I saw it then and see it now: neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. McCain were launching a wholesale assault upon my life or system of beliefs. Truthfully, if you hold these past 21 months up to the light, you might well find that to be true for yourself as well.
My candidate won tonight, but I am not a Democrat. Too many pay lip-service to any party's political platform as the forge a path of their own devising for me to willingly surrender my desire to vote the candidate rather than the party. From the liberal-leaning Republicans to the "Dixi-crat" Democratic senators of the Clinton era, Rinos and Dinos make me cynical of any party-line vote.
The names tossed at me that I mentioned before are nothing as to what has been bandied about with abandon in this campaign, mostly from the Reds to the Blues, the gloves coming off and the nails coming out as we find ourselves in politics embodying what Tennyson might have called 'politics, red in tooth and claw.'
For too long we have sat and listened and watched in silence as our putative leaders drive in the wedges, chant and wave signs and trade barbed verbal attacks in rallies and on the internet, tell lies and sling mud as they pound gleefully upon the wedges without regard for those on the thin end. Wedge issues abound in this election, made all the more virulent by the stark differences in the candidates, the attachment of ageism to the one and the dangerous and ineffable 'other' to his opponent.
This is what scares me about an Obama victory.
I watched and listened as this election has unfolded, as we regressed from a national conversation to a national argument with shouts of "Terrorist" and "Commie" coming from the cheap seats. And it has become increasingly clear to me that we stand at the potential flashpoint of our hitherto rhetorical civil war. It scares me to think that I might be right, that the leaders who set this fuse might not be able to walk back the damage they have done. That we might not heal. I can't help but think that every time we walk down this path it gets more difficult to walk back. If 21 months is the new standard for presidential elections, then we have 24 months to rest - at most - before we do this again.
Rest, America. You've earned it. Communicate with your leaders. Tell them what you want from them in the next cycle of elections as the midterms already loom large on the horizon.
Tonight, John McCain made an excellent speech. An eloquent concession and call for unification. But it cannot pass mention that those calling and hooting from the gallery were only told 'please'. And there was no direct address to walking back the charges made, the whispers spoken on the internet.
We need more. The man has yet to assume the office and already two bizarre plots to kill him have been stopped. This is a dangerous time, a time that can be the time of honor and disciplined governance from both sides that our nation needs. A time of healing and statesmanship. A time of civilized discourse and earnest disagreements given voice with passion and erudition.
In the past 232 years, we have endured 43 men in the office of the presidency. Some have sought the office. Many assumed the mantle in a time when it was considered more appropriate that the office seek the man rather than vice versa. There have been successes and failures, giants and poltroons. And the republic still stands.
Whomever is reading this, I implore you to take a deep breath. If he's not your guy, this too shall pass as the 43 men before him have. If he is, enjoy this moment. Do you utmost to see to it that your candidate becomes the president that you saw in him. That his potential is fullfilled.
I believe that the thin end of the wedge to end all wedges is poised above us. It is up to us to see to it that it is never driven home. To re-couch the words of Lincoln from the speech with which I began this rambling blog post, from the conclusion of his famous speech, his words describing the insurgent Republican party of the election of 1854, but better still they could describe the coalition of Americans we need now from all points on the political spectrum:
"Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now?-now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail-if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come"
God bless, everyone. And God bless the United States of America.
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