Substance Over Style

Much was made of comparisons to Abraham Lincoln in the last Presidential election. One wonders why. Abraham Lincoln boasted an unseemly image - not one preferred by the careful crafting of political media experts who do things like make sure the candidates sleeves are rolled up just so to create a "let's roll up our sleeves," "problem-solver" image. They craft the image - knowing that image and sound bite define the man in the public's perception. And they bombarded us with images and words. So many words. The bombardment continues.

As I said, Lincoln would not be well-served by the camera - and we would not be either. The camera could not define Abraham Lincoln. His image does not fit our current definition of presidential image. If Nixon wore the wrong suit in his famed television debate with Kennedy, Lincoln got everything wrong. Descriptions of him by friends included words like gawky, lanky, homely. One of his closest friends, Joshua Speed, described him as "a long, gawky, ugly, shapeless man." His clothes did not fit his unusual frame. His pants ended well north of the tops of his shoes. He apparently cared not about his appearance - even when tailored clothes fell easily within his means.

The human tendency to make judgments on appearances drives those crafting images. Images deceive. Lincoln's looks communicated "intellectual ordinariness" (at best). This man was not an ordinary man. Would we miss someone of Lincoln's stature because he was ugly and awkward? Would anyone take him seriously? What would SNL do to him in a skit?
Would we hear the depth of the man in this "sound bite" world? Would his moral fiber stand out and attract us or be torn apart by the hazing of a late-night pundit or blogging know-it-all?

A man of thoughtful and substantial insight, Abraham Lincoln towers above any on the political landscape today. No human agency crafted his character, his leadership skill, his power to persuade and convince. Consider the words of a fellow legislator, Robert Wilson, observing Lincoln at about age 25. "He was, on the stump, and in the Halls of Legislation a ready Debater, manifesting extraordinary ability in his peculiar manner of presenting a subject. He did not follow the beaten track of other Speakers, and Thinkers, but appeared to comprehend the whole situation of the Subject, and take hold of its first principles...his memory was a great Store house in which was Stored away all the facts, acquired by reading but principally by observation... Supplying him with an inexhaustible fund of facts, from which he would draw conclusions, and illustrating every Subject however complicated with anecdotes drawn from all classes of Society, accomplishing the double purpose, of not only proving his Subject by the anecdote, that no one ever forgets, after hearing Mr. Lincoln tell a Story, either the argument of the Story, the Story itself, or the author. (Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography; William Lee Miller; Vintage Books; 2002)