There are two new biographies of Abraham Lincoln, one a psychological biography by Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln's Melancholy, which is out now. I read Lincoln's Melancholy over the weekend and came away deeply impressed with the fact that imperfection was an acceptable quality in our leaders during the 1800s, but that today it is not.
The modern American has parsed the experiences of their own lives into such narrow categories based on a mythos of the value of optimism that they no longer accept a candidate who does not pretend to be perfect. Note: I said "pretend," because we know there are no perfect people. Presidential candidates today attempt, by setting and staying on a fixed set of messages, to excise any faults from their record and, more importantly, to portray themselves as representing an ideal of the type of voters in their coalition.
Lincoln also would be aghast at the Republican dedication to strict constructionism in the interpretation of of the U.S. Constitution. An early and dedicated believer in evolution, Lincoln conceived of the founding documents of the republic as a platform for change. As Shenk puts it: "The spirit of the Declaration, Lincoln said, was meant to be realized — to the greatest extent possible — by each succeeding generation. The Founders cast off despotism and created a framework for a free republic, invoking, as they did, not arguments of mere self-interest but the ideal of natural, universal, God-given rights. 'They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society,' Lincoln said, 'which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for... even though never perfectly attained."
Liberty, then, is a work in process, not something accomplished 220 years ago and never to be changed, only conserved.
Lincoln's depression, which is the subject of Shenk's biography, gave him both a pragmatic outlook on the world about him and a reservoir of strenght and resolve, as well as a firm belief in his own potential to change the world for the better.
Based on an article about the upcoming book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, in The Atlantic Monthly, Shenk's explanations about how Lincoln's personality allowed him to achieve such great feats of leadership is an excellent backdrop for reading Goodwin's Lincoln biography. Focusing on the entire cabinet and, particularly, William Seward, Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination and his Secretary of State, Goodwin's book looks to capture why the group of men who came together in the Lincoln Administration were the right—perhaps only—team to work with Lincoln to preserve the Union.
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