Confidence and Bravado: A President's Day Reflection

"The difference between the almost right word & the right word," Mark Twain wrote in 1888, " is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

I thought of this quote last week while reading an entry on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish about Abraham Lincoln. It's a letter from Lincoln to Ulysses Grant in which he admits a mistake:

My dear General,

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did -- march the troups across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake.

I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

Yours very truly
A. Lincoln

What is the one single quality a man would have to have to write such a letter? The word I came up with was "confident." Lincoln is a man who is smart and secure enough to be able to rationally admit a mistake.

But isn't George Bush -- who is pictured above in his 2009 Halloween costume aboard the ship the USS Abraham Lincoln -- a confident man, too?

The answer is "not quite." The word is not quite the right one. Rather, Bush demonstrates what you'd call "bravado," a foolishly unyielding confidence.

George Bush, unlike war hero John Kerry, is certainly no flip-flopper, so he certainly could have never written a letter like the Lincoln letter. But at least he has a liberal dosing of bravado to complement his swagger and his Andrew Johnson-like stubbornness.

Bush likes to compare himself to former presidents, like Harry S Truman and Abraham Lincoln. The comparisons are rubbish. Truman was our last true liberal president, advocating national health care and civil rights.

The comparisons turn into contrasts when you scratch the Bush-Truman surface a little:

• Truman founded the United Nations. Bush lied to the United Nations.
• Truman fought a limited war in Korea that was truly an international effort. Bush's Iraq fiasco was largely a U.S. effort, involving only an additional 24 non-combat Laundry Corps soldiers from Poland, a country that has since withdrawn not only all its troops but also all its fabric softener.
  
• Truman was instrumental in international efforts such as the founding of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; Bush shows contempt for such globalism, opposing the Kyoto accords and showing absolutely no interest in international cooperation whatsoever prior to 9/11.
  
• Truman opposed generals for the right reasons; for example, he had the audacity (and the vision and good judgment) of disagreeing with the very popular (and possibly manic) Gen. Douglas MacArthur by refusing to use dozens of atomic weapons against China and Manchuria. Bush opposed generals, too, but the problem is that these generals, unlike MacArthur, turned out not to be insane.
  
• Truman demonstrated confidence and certitude; Bush demonstrates ... bravado and stubbornness.
  

From all of us here at The Cup of Joe, and by all of us I mean "me," here's wishing a Happy President's Day to you and all you hold dear. As you head off for a night of partying and celebrating the holiday with loved ones, remember that the difference between the right word and the wrong word, and the difference between a good president and a dreadful president, is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. May your lights shine brightly, my friends.

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Was Abraham Lincoln Gay?

First off, we here at The Cup of Joe need to send a birthday shout-out to Abraham Lincoln. He would have been 198 today, had he lived. (I understand he tells all his friends in heaven that he's only 129.)

Last week, on Andrew Sullivan's blog, Andrew got me thinking when he wrote that Walt Whitman was arguably the most distinguished gay American in history, then noted parenthetically that this is true "if you don't count Lincoln."

Now, I realize that Andrew is being a little tongue-in-cheek in so casually acknowledging the premise that Lincoln may have been gay, a premise advocated in recent years through various books and articles. But the idea has been around for decades, and was slyly alluded to in a Carl Sandburg 1926 biography that hints that Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Speed had "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets."

Was Lincoln gay? It's a good time to revisit the question, especially since the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Cheney, as in Mary Cheney.

I've read a good amount on Lincoln, so I've given this question some thought before. Of all the books I've read, I think the best single "straight" biography of Abe is David Donald's book Lincoln, for its scope, thoroughness, the objectivity of its decidedly unheroic portrait, and the author's emphasis on primary sources.

What do I mean by a primary source? Well, Donald didn't rely on newspaper accounts, or, say, the multi-volume biography of Lincoln by Sandburg or the biographical accounts of any number of other historians. Nope, Donald relied on primary sources, like letters and diaries and government documents and presidential papers. First-hand accounts. Straight from "Mary's" mouth, so to speak, as in Mary Todd and others.

WHEN ABRAHAM MET JOSHUA

I've snapped a photo of the page from the Donald book that describes how Lincoln first met his best and most intimate friend, Joshua Speed. (CLICK TO ENLARGE THE PHOTO.) It should be noted that David Donald has made clear in interviews that he does NOT subscribe to the notion that Lincoln was a Friend of Dorothy.

So why do some people say Lincoln was gay? Here's a quick review:

* Joshua Speed and Lincoln shared a bed for four years, a fact that is not up for historical debate. It happened. Does this make Lincoln gay? Not necessarily, because it was common for men to share beds in rooming houses at the time. So you can't say for sure.

* Lincoln also is said to have shared his bed with a solder (David Derickson) for an eight-month period during The Civil War but only when his wife was away, according to C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (2005). Does this make him gay? Well, it's impossible to say. The behavior is a little strange, but during a Civil War when you're the president, wouldn't you want a bodyguard close by, particularly if it's a strapping soldier with buns of steel and the guns to match?

On second thought, you don't have to even answer the question since the book's conclusions based on available evidence have already been pretty much discredited.

* Lincoln didn't have particularly close relationships with women, but Joshua Speed was his closest and most intimate friend. Even an old-fashioned and cautious historian like David Donald emphasizes this closeness and intimacy.

* Lincoln certainly suffered from depression, which sometimes sounds more like bi-polar disorder. Was Lincoln depressed in part because he had, on some level, a kind of self-hate that many closeted homosexuals experience?

A PENNY FOR MY THOUGHTS?

What's the bottom line for me?

You can't say that Lincoln was definitely not gay. There's evidence to indicate that Lincoln hardly was what you'd call a Kinsey 1 or zero, and that on the spectrum of sexuality he certainly wasn't in the same camp with, say, Sam Elliot.

But to leap to the conclusion that Lincoln was gay is quite the stretch. In Lincoln's day people didn't discuss sex. Sex wasn't a topic for polite company during the Victorian Era. This generation didn't leave us the evidence we'd need to arrive at some sound answer to the question. (And we also have to be careful not to read a 19th century letter or diary entry with a 21st century mindset.)

We'll never know whether Lincoln was gay or not, and anybody who claims otherwise is going to have to show me the YouTube video (shot in secret by Matthew Brady, of course) to prove that Lincoln was splitting more than just rails.

Maybe if we had video-shooting cell phones, gay.com, blogs, gay hooker Mike Jones and crystal meth way back when, we'd have some clearer and substantial evidence on the whole matter, and we could declare Lincoln as not only America's finest president, but also its greatest and finest Otter as well.

Master Bait and Switch

I've had some new readers to this blog in the last week, thanks to this post featuring some hunky men in a "fantasy football" Super Bowl pitting the Bears against the Colts. If only the real Super Bowl would be as entertaining.

I do feel a little bit bad about this, especially if you are a repeat visitor, because instead of being greeted with more Shirtless Gods in a harness, you have been getting posts featuring what this blog is really about: Abraham Lincoln, George Bush and Morris the Cat.

Sorry.

If you do a Google search of
"Bears versus Colts preview," my post
(as of this morning) is the FIRST entry
on the list. This amuses me.

We Really Liked Abe

We here at The Cup of Joe are thankful, very thankful, that U.S. News & World Report editors, in confidently declaring The Gettysburg Address to be "America's Greatest Speech" on its most recent cover, opted for this most eloquent and brilliant expression instead of, say, the Sally Field "you really like me" Oscar acceptance speech.

However, we also believe that many historians (and as a construction worker I can't count myself to be a historian) would argue that the Gettysburg Address can't possibly be "America's greatest speech" because it probably wasn't even Lincoln's greatest speech.

These historians would probably point to the extraordinary words (and historical context) of his Second Inaugural, and they might say that his famous "Address at Cooper Union" (Feb. 27, 1860) was so masterful that it propelled a failed politician and a relatively unknown country lawyer right into the White House, and that maybe these speeches are even more extraordinary than The Gettysburg Address, and that maybe declaring something as the "best ever" might sell magazines but is really a little silly and a little self-important.

When 1,500 New Yorkers listened to Lincoln for 45 minutes at Cooper Union, they really, really liked him, just as America would later embrace Sally Field.

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You Can't Beat War Coverage Like This

With the situation in Iraq and the Middle East deadlier than ever, now is a good time to give pause and reflect on which major U.S. newsweekly does the best job of covering the American Civil War.

This would be U.S. News & World Report, of course. The magazine's latest issue, now on newstands and pictured at right, lends some insight into Lincoln at Gettysburg and promises on the cover to take a "new look at America's greatest speech."

Here's a suggestion for editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman for what his cover should be next week: Do another Lincoln cover, and celebrate the 13th anniversary of Garry Wills winning the Pulitzer prize for Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1992), a superb and influential work that took a new look at America's greatest speech way back in the early 90s.

We wish U.S. News well, as well, in their future reporting on that other Civil War, the one going on in Iraq, and on reporting on the eloquent speeches (from 2006) that will shine a shimmering and welcome light on this happening-right-now blood bath.

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