Politics in a different era

Not to be tendentious, but it really does seem that we're lurching from one crisis of leadership to another here in the U.S.  And none of them, for whatever reason, are sticking — so we go on lurching.

What went wrong?

I'm reading a biography of Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln managed to travel some very difficult political roads in his life, and I thought the book might be helpful in understanding political dirty pool — surely 19th-century dirty pool was just as dirty (maybe dirtier) than 21st-century dirty pool is. 

Here's a paragraph that struck me yesterday:

It was a country for young men. “We find ourselves,” the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln told the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, “in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate.” The founding fathers had crafted a government more favorable to liberty “than any of which the history of former times tells us.”  Now it was up to their children to preserve and expand the great experiment.

Great experiment?  Peaceful possession? And, the big one:  a government more favorable to liberty than any other in history?

What went wrong?

December 22, 2005 | Filed Under main page 

Comments

4 Responses to “Politics in a different era”

  1. Anonymous on December 22nd, 2005 9:00 am

    Yes, one can be driven to despair at times. On the other hand, communications technology is enabling an increasing diversity of discussion, in the US and globally, compared to 5 years ago or 15, 50 or 150 years ago. I find that a source of optimism, at least for the long term.
    Thank you for your insights and perspectives, whether pessimistic or optimistic, and best wishes for an interesting and prosperous new year.

  2. Anonymous on December 23rd, 2005 10:46 am

    I'm usually very optimistic about technology, and I share your view that things are steadily getting more interesting.
    thanks for your good wishes! Best wishes to you as well –
    Susan

  3. Anonymous on December 23rd, 2005 12:50 pm

    As a libertarian, I'm very concerned with state-sponsered surveillance. But.
    I think the current hubbub is a tempest in a teapot. I quote the hugh hewitt and cass sunstein interview below:

    Hugh: Do you consider the quality of the media coverage here to be good, bad, or in between?
    Cass: Pretty bad, and I think the reason is we're seeing a kind of libertarian panic a little bit, where what seems at first glance…this might be proved wrong…but where what seems at first glance a pretty modest program is being described as a kind of universal wiretapping, and also being described as depending on a wild claim of presidential authority, which the president, to his credit, has not made any such wild claim. The claims are actually fairly modest, and not unconventional. So the problem with what we've seen from the media is treating this as much more peculiar, and much larger than it actually is.

  4. Anonymous on December 23rd, 2005 7:31 pm

    I wasn't necessarily (or only) talking about the Administration's warrantless surveillance program in 2001.
    But, now that you mention it, it seems like something worth taking seriously.

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