He’d never get elected today! 10

Four years later after winning reelection to the Presidency for a second term Lincoln was equally soft-spoken: “Having served four years in the depths of a great, and unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term in nowise more flattering to myself, than as an expression of the public judgment that I may better finish a difficult work in which I have labored from the first, than could anyone less severely schooled to the task.”

He’d never get elected today! 9

Can you imagine any victory speech in the political world we live in of knee-jerk animosity that mirrors Lincoln’s in winning the Presidency in 1860? “In all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”

895

8/27

He’d never get elected today! 8

His victory speeches are without equal. Every other politician in the world, whether he’s just been elected president or dogcatcher, reacts to his victory in exactly the same way: he gives a victory speech full of references to the historic sweep of what just took place; he will now begin the process of fulfilling all those promises and so Everything Will Be Different Now that we’ve swept the crooks out of office.

On the contrary, Lincoln sounds a far different tone. Listen to him after winning the Presidency in 1860: “I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period, and am now, in your eyes, invested with an influence which will soon pass away; but should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you, the people are but true to yourselves and to the Constitution, there is but little harm I can do, thank God!”

He’d never get elected today! 7

In 1858 when he lost the Senatorial election to Stephen Douglas I think Lincoln was as bitterly disappointed as any candidate losing election. Yet when asked how he felt about that result, this is what he said: “I felt like the boy who stubbed his toe rather badly; I’m too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh.”

He’d never get elected today! 6

'Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.'

- Abraham Lincoln

He’d never get elected today! 5

Flip floppers don’t get [re]elected:

“Honest old Abe when this war first began

Denied abolition was part of his plan.

Honest old Abe has since made a decree

That the war must go on till the slaves are all free.

As both can’t be honest, will someone tell how,

If honest Abe then he is honest Abe now.”

Civil War doggerel

He’d never get elected today! 4

'I cannot understand why men should be so eager after money. Wealth is simply a superfluity of what we don't need. '

- Abraham Lincoln