A talk with Douglas Wilson

Obama's writing suggests a surprising lesson from Abraham Lincoln: Style matters

IT'S EASY TO focus on the superficial similarities between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln - two outsiders from Illinois who improbably bested established figures, only to take office in times of epic crisis. (And yes, they're both skinny, too.) But the resonance runs deeper, to a sympathy that ranges from politics, to intellect, even to a spiritual vision.

The clearest sight of this comes, not when Obama is wrapping himself in Lincoln's mantle, but when he points out the 16th president's limitations - how, for example, "his condemnation of slavery might be considered tentative." Amidst all the self-conscious - and politically useful - gestures of comparison, Obama resists deifying Lincoln. This is, in fact, the truest homage he can offer. As he wrote in Time in 2005, "It is precisely those imperfections - and the painful self-awareness of those failings etched in every crease of his face and reflected in those haunted eyes - that make him so compelling."

This is no mere rhetorical jig, nor is it only biographical trivia. Lincoln's real power came from his searing humility, a combination that was most plainly on view in masterpieces like the second inaugural address. In a 2005 speech, Obama quoted Lincoln saying that "character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." Though it's often underappreciated - and sometimes maligned - superior rhetoric, too, is the real thing. The labor of composition drives a writer to ask the most basic questions of what he thinks and believes, and how he can draw his listeners along with him.

Though his foes strained to make it a liability, Obama's oratory made his campaign. The question now, as we anticipate his inaugural address, is how it will make his presidency - and how he will measure up to Lincoln's standard of using language to shape reality.

To explore the literary resonances between Obama and Lincoln, I called Douglas Wilson, a top scholar of Lincoln's writing. Wilson, who was trained in English literature and came to study history as an outgrowth of his interest in the reading and writing of Jefferson and Lincoln, is the author, most recently, of "Lincoln's Sword," a remarkable portrait of Lincoln's writing, rooted in a careful consideration of the president's manuscript drafts. Wilson's comments were edited in consultation with him.

IDEAS: The act of composition is so integral to understanding what we think, what's true and what's facile. In the era of the speechwriter leaders simply read words that have been composed for them. And the anomaly is that now we have an incoming president who, like Lincoln, is a writer. What do you think we can expect from Obama as a writer in chief?

WILSON: The question really would be, How do you adjust for the demands of the current time? Lincoln took two months to write his message to Congress for July 4, 1861. And the last two weeks, he simply closed the door. He wouldn't see anybody but cabinet members. He was bearing down on it. Most people think it would be unreasonable that a contemporary president would waste his time in that way. But I wonder. I wonder if you are a really good writer and you can do it better than anybody, whether you wouldn't consider that time well spent.

If I had any advice to give Obama, I would say, remember that people tried to get Lincoln to let more experienced people write his speeches, and he kept saying, "No, I have to do it myself." I think there's some real wisdom there.

IDEAS: Do you see stylistic similarities?

WILSON: I'd say Obama has some of Lincoln's basic concern for clarity. I just re-read the patriotism speech at Independence and the one on race at Philadelphia. They are quite striking for their clarity, their plain language. And plain language means something extra when you know the person is a wordsmith who has lots of words in his command.

IDEAS: There are moments when his language is so colloquial that you forget that you're being spoken to by this very significant person. In his patriotism speech, he says, "After 9/11, we were asked to shop." It's something that most politicians would spend a paragraph or two or three on. But we immediately understand the point. It's almost an ironic statement in that it is supposing the criticism without really developing it.

And toward the end of the race speech, he says, "We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial; or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina; or as fodder for the nightly news." That's so compact.

WILSON: I agree with you. It's very effective. "Shop"? "O.J. trial"? It's bare-bones, but it's clear, economical, and it reaches people.

I just saw a piece on the "Newshour" on the financial crisis. It was trying to get at this idea of, what inspires confidence. Why do people have it? How do they get it? And why do they lose it? And one economist who studies this was trying to show that it's really a matter of what they call "animal spirits." It's the way people feel about the thing. I think at some level rhetoric is the same way. How do things appeal to us? They appeal to something, some basic thing that we deeply respond to. It's got to be emotional.

IDEAS: One dramatic difference between these two men is that Obama has been at times dismissed as just a smooth talker, whereas Lincoln in his early days was dismissed as simple and ignorant.

WILSON: Right. Even when, as president, Lincoln began to produce these speeches, when people saw that something really impressive was published under his name, they said, "Well, this had to be written by one of his cabinet members." He was underestimated. And they made fun of him for writing public letters. Even Emerson said he "cheapened" himself by writing for the newspapers. But these letters were enormously influential.

IDEAS: It makes me think that part of what makes a communicator innovative is not the words but the form. We think of FDR's fireside chats, for example, as a new way of communicating with people, obviously drawing on a new technology. It makes you wonder what innovations might await Obama.

WILSON: There's the Saturday radio broadcast that has become a fixture. Next, there may well be a weekly televised broadcast.

IDEAS: Maybe he could be the first presidential blogger. Can you imagine that? Number of comments - 50 million.

WILSON: Right. [Laughs.]

IDEAS: Obama's friend and colleague Cass Sunstein describes him as a "visionary minimalist" - someone who wants to remake America's conception of itself in a fundamental way, but who also wants to "bracket our deepest disagreements" and govern by consensus.

WILSON: That's very Lincolnian, don't you think? Whatever idealism he had, when he was at work as a politician, he really put that in the background. A lot of idealists get so disgusted with the democratic system that they get radicalized and move beyond democracy, and you get Castro. Lincoln is always thinking in terms of what's possible in a democracy. When he finds himself building the Republican Party in the 1850s, he says to people, "Look, we've got to confine ourselves to the one thing that we agree on, and let up on the things that pull us apart. Let's stay focused on the one big thing that matters most: preventing the extension of slavery." This is natural to him. He doesn't say "We've got to stand for all these other things because I think they're right."

IDEAS: At the same time he had a very long view of history and an ambitious sweep to his thinking.

WILSON: Lincoln introduces this idea in his Dred Scott speech that when the Declaration of Independence says "all men are created equal," it's setting a standard. We may not reach the standard now, and we may not reach it next year, but we've always got to work toward it. In the Chicago speech, in 1858, he uses the biblical analogy, saying, in effect, "When the savior says be ye perfect, he knows we will never be perfect, but he's telling us what to shoot for." Even though you can't reach perfection, you always have to strive for it.

IDEAS: Obama said at the end of his victory speech, "We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there." It's a conscious echo of King, but it also reflects thinking that was essential to Lincoln, which Obama clearly knows. For example, he always points out Lincoln's limits on slavery, but he says that "He kept his moral compass pointed firm and true."

WILSON: They share this idea that you have to embrace the history. You can't stand on the sideline. That doesn't mean that you're approving all the bad things that have been done. You're accepting them, understanding that they're part of the process, and then you engage the process to try to push things farther along toward the goal.

Lincoln had a tough row, because he had to say "All right, I won't object to slavery in Virginia. That's their constitutional right. And they have a constitutional right to get their slaves back, with the fugitive slave law. Even though I don't like it, I have to embrace it to keep faith with the Constitution." Lincoln's emphasis was on putting slavery on the road of ultimate extinction.

IDEAS: In the patriotism speech, I think Obama takes this in a brilliant direction. Basically, as I read it, his argument is that loving this country means loving an idea that is unfulfilled - an idea that is there to be perfected. And so, in a sense, criticizing our country is an act of patriotism. He redefines patriotism as a process that not only involves, but even requires, defiance. That seems to me quite an extraordinary piece of rhetoric. Who else is in their league, in terms of the audacity that this rhetoric embodies?

WILSON: There aren't very many rhetoricians as presidents, not first-rate ones. Lincoln is really in a category by himself. Obama invites comparison with Lincoln, and I think it's worthwhile to take him seriously. And what is amazing is that it may be that the crisis that he has to deal with will be bigger than Roosevelt's, and will be comparable in magnitude to what was asked of Lincoln.

IDEAS: And that's what makes this comparison to Lincoln almost eerie, is the way in which you have this crisis of epic proportions that even before the presidency begins very clearly comes to define it in a way that allows both figures to act in extraordinary times in ways that may be perfectly conducive to his instincts.

WILSON: What struck me the other day is the train ride. Obama wants to come into Washington the way Lincoln did. He keeps suggesting this affinity with Lincoln. Who else would say, in effect: "Compare me with Lincoln? Hold me up against him."

IDEAS: And Lincoln did the same thing. In his farewell address, he said that no one had faced the troubles that awaited him since Washington.

WILSON: It's true.

IDEAS: This is what we both hope for and dread, that we'll have an epic presidency of the same order.

WILSON: It's an interesting time.

Joshua Wolf Shenk is the author of "Lincoln's Melancholy" and the co-editor, with Harold Holzer, of "In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts With Commentaries by Distinguished Americans." He directs the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College.