Certainly many parallels have been drawn between the two astute politicians from Illinois who became president of the United States. I was reading a book about one of them, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, just now when I came across a passage of relevance here.
After his nomination as the Republican candidate for president, the renowned orator Lincoln refused speaking engagements and refused to authorize political statements, pointing only to his previous speeches and the Republican platform. He even refused to deny false statements made against him.
Author Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote:
When his friend Leonard Swett asked his approval of a letter expressing the candidate’s sentiments, Lincoln replied, “Your letter, written to go to N.Y. is … substantially right.” However, he advised, “Burn this, not that there is anything wrong with it but because it is best not to be known that I write at all.” He recognized that anything he said would be scanned scrupulously for partisan purposes. …
Informing a Jewish friend that he had never entered a Know Nothing lodge, as accused by Democrats, he cautioned that “our adversaries think they can gain a point if they could force me to openly deny this charge, by which some degree of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason, it must not publicly appear that I am paying attention to the charge.”
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Likewise, the birthers would gain a point if Obama responded to their demands.
Slam Dunk.
Great find Doc.
The birther klan just wants someone to talk about it because every time someone does that, it give them an opportunity to repeat their litany of lies; they’re not just pathological liars, they are also compulsive liars.
I think this all goes back to Tricky Dicky. They just can’t stand having the true nature of Republicans being exposed
Excellent find. A good example indeed. Lincoln was a wise and astute man.
I believe that there was a lot of reporting at the time that Obama read this work. We know he is quite a fan of history and in studying certain past presidents – especially Lincoln, FDR and Reagan. We also know he’s read Doris Kearns Goodwin.
And unlike any of the birthers or the birther lawyers, we also know he’s a Constitutional scholar.
You have something there.
Their “louder and more often” button that’s analogous with pushing the button at a crosswalk 75 times in hopes the light will change.
You’re REALLY reaching here. What politician can’t say he was “charged” with anything.
The problem is that LINCOLN didn’t HIDE anything.
Obama has hidden his whole life.
Constitutional scholar? Please. To be included with me as a graduate of University of Chicago is insulting … to me.
He was a “visiting professor”, and not well liked by many there … for the way he carried himself.
The birthers are a tiny minority of contemptible bigots; it would make absolutely no sense to even acknowledge their existence, even less respond to them.
I mean, does NASA respond to flat-earthers?
I don’t think flat-Earthers call NASA daily demanding photos of the Earth’s “edges” though.
A point in their favor, surely. 🙂
> I don’t think flat-Earthers call NASA daily demanding photos of the Earth’s “edges” though.
I don’t remember them writing letters to all airline companies and their pilots who must be in on the flat Earth conspiracy as well. Though I wonder how they hide the fact that a travel between two cities that are very close on a spherical Earth but would be at the extreme ends of a flat Earth takes many hours instead of a few minutes. Do they flush the cabin with narcotics and then change all the passengers’ watches? I already find their conspiracy theory much more entertaining than the birther crap…
Besides, I forgot: flat Earthers could just rent a ship and drive in any direction, sooner or later they’d reach the end of the world. Why don’t they?
That’s why birthers try to shift the burden of proof. They know that if they tried to prove one of their claims themselves (such as showing a credible source for the “1981 Pakistan travel ban”), they’d end up proving Obama right.
For your consideration Doc:
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/handbill.htm
Hi Charo
Thanks for that link. History can be fascinating. Did you notice this editorial comment,
“For contemporary readers, the handbill probably raises more questions than it answers”
Maybe, President Lincoln learned that responding to such rumors only created more rumors.
Also, this handbill came out after the election was over. So maybe in 2016, President Obama will respond to the birthers.
How is a letter written in 1846 relevant to what Lincoln did or did not do to answer slurs in 1860?
I don’t recall seeing Lincoln’s birth certificate or his kindergarten records. Did Lincoln even HAVE a birth certificate? How do you know he wasn’t born in Canada?
Obama wrote an extremely informative autobiography. In 2008, The Guardian’s Rob Woodard wrote that Dreams from My Father “is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years.” The idea that Obama has “hidden his whole life” is an absurd birther slogan that has no basis in reality.
Thanks for your on topic contribution. Lincoln lost a lot of bids for public office between 1846 and 1860, becoming a much more experienced politician in that time period.
One can only wonder at the public reception of that broadside, and what Lincoln might have learned from the experience.
I had terrible history teachers in school until my junior year and didn’t realize the value of the subject until then. I am not a history buff by any means, but I enjoy learning when I can. I thought that the link gave an interesting picture of how he handled an early campaign issue by explaining his position and defending himself without himself resorting to low tactics. Such eloquence.
I wonder if Lincoln would have even considered campaigning for President today. (BTW, I most always enjoy your catchy title posts)
post titles
Typical of birthers to disparage Obama’s role at the University of Chicago. Too bad for you that the university doesn’t feel the same way.
From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School’s Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/media
“Obama has hidden his whole life.”
If you’re an illiterate birther idiot with the reading comprehension skills of a drunken toddler, that might be true.
Lincoln was born in Norway and brought to the US as an infant, where he was adopted by the Lincolns The evidence is conclusive enough to be accepted as definitive proof in any court in birfistan::
1. Lincoln was very tall. Norwegians are welll known for being tall.
2. There is a monument to him in Frogner Park, the largest park in Oslo http://www.flickr.com/photos/7486366@N08/2125903058/
3. Lincoln had a beard. The Vikings wore beards.
4. Lincoln grew up in a log cabin. Norway is known for log cabins.
The thing that birthers just can’t deny is that Barack Hussein Obama had Dreams From My Father published in 1995, a full TWELVE YEARS before he announced his candidacy for president and that book (which became a number one worldwide best seller) laid out in intricate detail his father’s birth and life in Kenya.
There was never the slightest attempt to hide that his father was never an American citizen, one of the birther’s primary arguments.
I posted this on a thread and never followed up with it because it got lost in the dialogue.
The early responses were largely encouraging, but some correspondents questioned Lincoln’s eligibility. The problem was that the Illinois Constitution forbade a member of the state legislature from running for federal office, and Lincoln was a member of the new legislature. Although a former congressman, he had agreed to run as a state representative because his popularity would help the local ticket. Fehrenbacher calls the mix-up “a surprising oversight for an eminent attorney at law.”9 It was actually not much of an oversight, however. The state constitution was only six years old and untested in many areas. The clause concerning Lincoln’s eligibility would later be proven unconstitutional on the grounds that no state may alter requirements for federal office. Only two years before, another member of the legislature had been the Whig nominee for U.S. Senate. The restriction was dubious and open to challenge. 9
Yet Lincoln chose to resign his seat. For someone who took so much pride in public service, resignation must have been difficult. But Lincoln wanted no doubts about his eligibility. There had been questions during the last senatorial election. Shields, a native of Ireland, was elected before he had been a naturalized citizen for seven years. The Democratic governor endured public scorn while he delayed calling a second election until after Shields had passed the required mark.10 Realizing that legislators might be sensitive to [End Page 5] creating another embarrassment for the state, Lincoln prevented any problems with a quick exit. His decision left no doubts about his ambition.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/14.2/pinsker.html
***
I believe the foregoing illustrates that Lincoln would have been concerned about public perception of presidential eligibility (versus the claim of his entering that lodge) so I disagree with the premise of your post in part. I say in part because maybe Mr. Lincoln would have felt that the publication of the COLB on a website was good enough for the general public to be satisfied as to a person’s eligibility prior to the election. Maybe he would have felt that would not have been good enough to quell any rumors. I have to tell you that I listened on Friday to a local radio program where a good portion of the show was devoted to the eligibility issue because my state is on eof the ones possibly proposing eligibility legislation. There was a lawyer on at the beginning who flung around the term wingnuts or something similar and ended up stating that no one could ever actually prove natural born citizenship beyond a reasonable doubt and that wingnuts are bipolar because on the one hand they want the government to stay out of our lives and on the other hand, to legislate citizenship. (I am paraphrasing). Anyways, all of the callers I heard were “birthers” to some degree. I was in the car taking kids to practice so I didn’t catch the whole show. It is incredible how much disinformation abounds. Incredible to the point of ridiculousness. I don’t believe old Abe would have wanted that at all.
Maybe, but in Lincoln’s case, per the letter of the state’s constitution, he was ineligible. So he only had three choices, ignore the constitutional requirement, resign or fight the law in court.
We don’t know how he would have responded had he been accused of being ineligible, when he clearly was eligible.
I must say that it is refreshing to see someone disagree with something I’ve written with new information and a sensible point of view. There has been so very little of that over the past 2 years.
I cannot see anyone foreseeing the denialist position on citizen parentals. It’s just not in the history or the law. One can imagine made up facts, but not made up history.
And yet in my daily internet debates with birthers, the most strident are the “two American citizen parents” true believers.
Don’t you know? Vattel IS the law (even though he was Swiss!). Its right there in the Constitution: “The Law of Nations….”
Thanks Doc. A compliment from you is truly a compliment.
JM said:
Obama has hidden his whole life.
He was a “visiting professor”, and not well liked by many there … for the way he carried himself.
He must not have done a good job of hiding his whole life if enough people in college knew him well enough to not only not like him, but to gather the reputation you claim.
Vattel was PRUSSIAN. He lived in Neufchatel = Neuenburg, which was inherited in 1707 by the King of Prussia, Friedrich I, and was governed by Prussia until the French Revolution .
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanton_Neuenburg
The link is in German, google can translate it for you.
I do not recall being the “popular teacher” as a requirement for presidential eligibility (however, nice lack of any or support or evidence of your claim).
Would this be “uppity?”
Or you can go straight to the English version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Neuch%C3%A2tel
🙂
> He must not have done a good job of hiding his whole life if enough people in college knew him well enough to not only not like him, but to gather the reputation you claim.
Apart from the fact that JM pulled that “fact” totally out of his rear end, as all birther claims they report as “facts”.
Typical baseless smears. I bet JM wouldn’t like people saying “Mothers didn’t let their children near JM, for obvious reasons” all across the Interwebs.
And this article from the University of Chicago Law School Alumni Magazine completely demolishes Joseph Maines’s claim that Obama was “not well liked” while he was teaching there.
“In Con Law III we study equal process and due process. He was incredibly charismatic, funny, really willing to listen to student viewpoints—which I thought was very special at Chicago,” says Elysia Solomon, ’99. “There were so many diverse views in the class and people didn’t feel insecure about voicing their opinions. I thought that he did a really good job of balancing viewpoints.”
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/alumni/magazine/spring09/greenloungetowhitehouse
Obama taught there for 12 years. Did Joseph Maine even attend the University of Chicago? Where is his evidence? Why hasn’t he posted his transcript? What is he hiding?
Wrong in every particular:
– Lincoln did not publicize his wife’s mental health issues, nor that his in-laws owned slaves.
– President Obama was adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago law school, as has been documented repeatedly by both the school and his fellow professors. He was offered a tenure track position at least once and turned it down.
– The statement that “the way he carried himself” made him unpopular is not true.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
More Obama derangement….From WND….
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily
If “It’s not over till the fat lady sings,” then I submit that “It’s not over till the skinny guy cools it.”
The one thing Barack Obama didn’t do in his speech at the shooting memorial in Tucson was “cool it.”
The event at the University of Arizona was supposedly a memorial service for the six dead and 14 wounded from the shooting massacre outside that Safeway in Tucson on Jan. 8.
Instead, with few exceptions, it was a glorification of the lowest common political denominator and a re-election rally stained by the tears of the victims’ families.
— Barbara Simpson, Jan. 24 WorldNetDaily column
I can forgive my public school system for sending me out into the world thinking that Mexico and even countries like Guatemala and Paraguay were just smaller Americas that speak Spanish. No dictators. No poverty. But I cannot forgive this administration for shamelessly presenting China as a “friend.” Did Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon etc. ever tell us the Soviet Union was a “friend”? No. They treated us like grownups. How dare Obama pump all that spray-deodorant on our “friends”! “Kowtow” is a Chinese word, but we do it much better than they do.
[…]
Can anybody explain why America’s first black president is so eager to kowtow to slave-masters?
— Barry Farber, Jan. 26 WorldNetDaily column
Speaking of Hawaii, its Democratic governor, Neil Abercrombie, recently admitted that they have been unable to track down Obama’s actual birth certificate. And while I acknowledge that even some conservative pundits have joined the left-wing knuckleheads in dismissing a certain number of patriots as “birthers,” the fact remains that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have stipulated prerequisites to being president if they hadn’t thought it mattered.
The good news for liberals is that even though nobody has been able to turn up the official document, they have sworn testimony by several people who just happened to have been in the Honolulu delivery room on Aug. 4, 1961. They include Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid, Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Henry Waxman, Bill Maher and Chris Matthews. The attending physician was Dr. Keith Olbermann, and the head nurse was Nancy Pelosi.
— Burt Prelutsky, Jan. 26 WorldNetDaily column
Americans have by now become accustomed to Obama’s sniveling obeisance to foreign leaders. It was not a surprise when our community organizer in chief bowed and scraped in greeting Hu, nor was it a shock when Obama claimed the American people “welcome China’s rise.” There was no doubt in any observer’s mind that Obama’s warm greeting to Hu was that of a cowed debtor attempting to curry favor with his chief creditor.
— Phil Elmore, Jan. 27 WorldNetDaily column
Yes, Americans want government out of our personal and private family lives. But government is ordained to protect innocent lives from being destroyed. And that’s what happens every time an abortion takes place.
Obama doesn’t care about the rights of women. He doesn’t care about privacy. He doesn’t care about “choice.” And he doesn’t care about or believe in the sanctity of human life.
— Joseph Farah, Jan. 28 WorldNetDaily column
The communist has begun his 2012 campaign for the dumb people. Rumor has it that Obama high-fived Michelle backstage after his speech at the Arizona victims’ memorial.
The tea party prevented Obama’s takeover. People like me are on top of him, watching his every snakey lie. That thing called taqiyya allows Muslims to lie for Allah. (To me, it looked like O choked on the word “God” when he said “God bless America” at the end of his speech.)
[…]
What if, just what if, Obama is the enemy, one of the Van Jones/William Ayres/Jeremiah Wright/Jarrett/Soros America-haters who are secretly intent on destroying America from the ground up and the top down? If that is the truth, Obama is succeeding.
You know that little lie detector part of your brain that knew my photograph at the top of this article was not taken in 2011, but in 1980? Use that when you listen to Obama.
— Victoria Jackson, Jan. 28 WorldNetDaily column
In any event, if you enjoy the theater, you’re going to love the next two years. Watching Obama pretend to be a born-again centrist will place him right up there with the best actors who have performed “Othello” on Broadway. Sure, his State of the Union address was a snoozer, but, honestly, he can do much better. Just wait and see.
— Robert Ringer, Jan. 28 worldNetDaily column
Serious addict of this page, numerous your blogposts have really helped me out. Looking towards upgrades!
My God, WND is a cesspit.
Agreed…I don’t understand how someone could read that trash and believe that it is somehow even closely releated to the truth…
Kind of like FOX news…Look at the comment and how Megyn Kelly pretends that it never happened…
“Birther on Fox: “I Know You Have A Soft Spot For People That Get Jobs Without Proper Documentation…Like Our President”
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102010028
Orly Taitz is building an enemies list — Updated
How very Richard Nixon of her.
Everyone’s favorite buffoon (and dental chair interpretive dancer) Orly Taitz has been taking a lot of heat over the last couple of years form people, like me, who have taken it upon themselves to truth-test her outlandish statements about President Obama’s eligibility to hold his office.
And it’s been well-deserved heat. Since before he was inaugurated, Taitz has claimed Obama is not Constitutionally eligible to serve as president, a claim that has been debunked over and over again.
Not good enough for Taitz, who, for whatever reason (and I have my own theory about that) is hell-bent on getting Obama out of office and “tried” for treason, or whatever. Of course, that’s not going to happen.
In addition to the truth-testers, Taitz has faced criticism from others in the so-called Birther movement and is the target of lawsuits involving them
Resorting to tactics used by the most oppressive of governments, in responding to her critics and the people who have filed suits against her, Taitz has used words like “scum,” “thug,” “Nazi,” and “communist” to denigrate us. She has urged the 12 or so people who read her blog to look people up, and then has published personal information — including Social Security numbers, which is against the law — on the Web. (Note to the private investigators she’s used in the past: You put your licenses in jeopardy if you aid her in this campaign of intimidation and threats against her critics.)
In the past few days, Taitz has taken aim at a blog of which I recently became a member, called The Fogbow. The Fogbow is composed primarily of lawyers who used to meet on another blog, called Politijab, to talk about legal cases. These particular folks focused on Taitz and the Birther movement at large, and formed their own group.
As a journalist, I’ve long held that you can tell how much of a threat you are to someone by their attempts to silence you. Over my career, I’ve had people threaten my job and my health to get me to stop writing. Thankfully, I’m pretty good at what I do so I was covered by my employers for the first category of threats, and I’ve taken steps over the years to cover myself and my family on the second.
Judging by her posts over the past couple of days, Taitz must really be feeling the heat by The Fogbow people. She’s made a number of requests of her “followers” to help her out members, most of whom prefer to be anonymous. No doubt to protect themselves from just such an action by Taitz. (I’m already so “exposed” on the ‘net, through my job and my books, that it would be useless to try to cloak my identity.)
She’s reprinted post after post from The Fogbow by certain people, who she’s asked her “Flying Monkeys” to identify, effectively creating a Taitz Enemies List. She even went so far as to request the identity of a poster so that person’s employer could be located and a demand made to fire the poster.
This coming from a person who fancies herself a “civil liberties” attorney.
If Taitz had even a fundamental grasp of what American civil liberties are, she’d be ashamed of herself. She’d know that dissent and criticism are to be expected in a free and open society, and that resorting to intimidation and, well, thuggery, to silence your critics is counter to all our principles. That’s the kind of behavior one would find in a dictatorship, not a republic. And exhorting others to do your own dirty work is just plain cowardly.
I don’t expect Taitz to take this post seriously, I expect her to ramp up her efforts to silence her critics. I expect the posts from her supporters to get increasingly nasty, in direct proportion to their realization that the quest they’ve been on for the past two-plus years is going to end badly for them. And, unfortunately, I expect her or someone under her direction or encouragement to do something stupid. But remember this, Taitz and supporters who wish to do us harm and try to follow through on that wish: There are those of us on the Left who are well acquainted with the term “lock and load.”
UPDATE
Orly is now tweeting that I have threatened her. Nothing could be further from the truth, as a rational reading of my post demonstrates. That was not a threat, just an acknowledgement that if we are threatened, there are those of us who can and will defend ourselves. To be even more clear, I have also added the phrase “who wish to do us harm and try to follow through on that wish.”
Keep the faith.
http://www.examiner.com/birther-movement-in-national/orly-taitz-is-building-an-enemies-list-1?page=1
Agreed!
Ah, yes. An uppity ni****.
Jesse Helms: The University of North Carolina (UNC) was “the University of Negroes and Communists”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1871
I still say Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. He never denied it, and he has never released his criminal record abstract stamped “subject has clear record to date.”
SHOW US YOUR RECORDS BECK!!!
Just to clarify the statement that
“Lincoln lost a lot of bids for public office between 1846 and 1860, ”
According to the official Bioguide website, here was Lincoln’s political record during that period:
… elected as a Whig to the Thirtieth Congress (March 4, 1847-March 3, 1849); did not seek a renomination in 1848; an unsuccessful applicant for Commissioner of the General Land Office under President Taylor; tendered the Governorship of Oregon Territory, but declined; unsuccessful Whig candidate for election to the United States Senate before the legislature of 1855; unsuccessful Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1858;
Note that he did seek a n appointi ve administrative office, unsuccessfully, and twice unsuccessfully sought a Senate seat. But note that none of these posts were filled directly by the voters. An enduring myth about Lincoln is that he lost s lot of elections, but the only time the public rejected Lincoln was in his very first race, for the state legislature, as a raw, raw-boned, socially awkward 23-year-old.