On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln bent his tall
frame over a piece of parchment and inked his signature, reviving, after decades,
George Washington’s national thanksgiving celebration and making it an official
holiday.
President George W. Bush has continued the tradition — there’s
already an e-proclamation on his Web site. But as I stock up on cranberries
and walnuts, the back of my neck prickles. Something’s missing.
Humility.
When Lincoln issued his first presidential proclamation, in 1861, he was calling the nation, not to turkey, yams and thanks, but to fasting, prayer and humility. Bothered by the prevailing mood of bravado and self-sufficiency, he urged Americans to atone for their sins of pride. Two years later, there was ample cause for thanksgiving, yet even in that proclamation, the note of humility remained.
Today, such emphasis on humility seems almost quaint. Yet for months, diplomats, politicians and intellectuals have been begging President Bush to show at least a shadow of the virtue — at the United Nations, in the Middle East, in Iraq, anywhere.
“A little humility — promised by this President but never delivered — could go a long way,” remarked Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean earlier this fall.
“They might sympathize more with our current predicament if the administration had shown some humility,” wrote the World Policy Institute’s Alon Ben-Meir.
I read the headlines — “Will Bush trade humility for help?” “Bush Needs to Wear Some Humility” “Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush’s Theology of Empire” — and cringe. Never a political creature, I don’t expect consonance with my country’s president. But rarely have I felt this heartsick.
In 1999, campaigning for president, Bush promised a “distinctly American internationalism” grounded in, yes, humility. In a 2000 presidential debate, he said, “If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.”
This year’s United Nations transcripts do not reflect perceptions of a humble nation. And contrary to the president’s expectations, many Iraqis did not welcome us.
Our go-it-alone bravado has become embarrassing, like a drunken uncle who swaggers into dinner boasting he can arm-wrestle every other guy to the ground. And now Thanksgiving nears, and I find myself missing a president I never knew.
My husband, a historian with a mind more methodical and dispassionate than mine, reminds me that the two presidents were not entirely dissimilar. Both led wars, both were single-minded in their determination to win them. Lincoln, bent on preserving the Union, approved far more bloodshed than we have yet seen in Iraq. He also suspended his share of civil liberties, including the writ of habeas corpus.
But Lincoln had a clear and achievable goal. He also had a habit of hard work, sensitivity and quirky humor — not entitlement, rigidity and a weird blend of backslapping charm and ready anger.
I would like to think my criticism too harsh, my president a humanist. He does seem sincere in his determination to bring “democracy and freedom” to the world, quick to criticize cruelty in his enemies. But 9/11 jolted a president never known for his subtlety of thought into a primitive, polarized world of either/or, us vs. them, good vs. evil, and he’s been stuck there ever since.
“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength,” he told the nation this September. “They are invited by the perception of weakness.” The action figures marketed to tiny Republicans depict the Commander-in-Chief in aviator uniform or a power suit and cowboy boots; the one with a voice box repeats, “Either you’re for us, or against us.” A few weeks ago, the president assured a California audience, “We’re meeting the tests of history. We’re defeating the enemies of freedom.” He said, without caveat, “America was right.” He called the war in Iraq “one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history” — forgetting that it’s not over yet.
Ah, the contrasts.
Lincoln pronounced himself “a great coward physically” and predicted he would make a poor soldier, running at the first sign of danger.
Bush strode across a carrier’s deck in an aviator’s uniform, and his aides refer to him with increasing frequency as the commander in chief. “Bring it on,” he snarls, instead of saying, as Lincoln did after the horrific Union defeat at Fredericksburg, “If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.”
Lincoln sat for hours, listening to any Americans who cared to make an appointment.
Bush avoids the news, lest a reporter’s viewpoint bias him. For perspective, he relies upon his staff.
Lincoln knew there was a good chance he would not be reelected in 1864, so he worked to put his would-be successor in the best possible position to negotiate an end to the war.
Bush and his staff are controlling spin, shutting down on media access, preparing hard for the election.
Lincoln’s overarching goal was clear and specific, yet his thinking admitted complexity. Bush’s overarching goal is heroic, diffuse and unattainable, yet his rhetoric consists of simple, bold aphorisms. He ties his arguments to Christianity, quoting (and often misquoting) hymns and Scripture passages as he vows to “rid the world of evil.” He talks about being born again in midlife, and says his newfound faith stopped him from drinking, shored up his family life and gave him a sense of purpose.
Lincoln already had one. He was cursed by purpose, made melancholy by his sensitivity to suffering, weighed down in a way that would appall a man who naps and golfs through crises. Lincoln thought deeply about theology, yet belonged to no church — and hesitated to attend church in Springfield for fear that he would not know how to act.
Without mentioning presidents, I ask Dr. Eric Nuetzel, director of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, to describe humility.
“Think of it as the opposite of arrogant narcissism,” he begins. “The word ‘humility’ comes from the root ‘humus,’ the earth. Humility is a kind of groundedness, allowing a realistic appraisal of oneself in the world. It comes from the ability to be honest with oneself.”
Humility can of course be exaggerated or falsified, used to gain an advantage or manipulate a situation, Nuetzel adds. “But a genuinely humble person tends to be more realistic, more thoughtful, less impulsive,” he says. “Humility is linked with empathy, humor and wisdom. It’s a very becoming trait.”
Again I am reminded of Lincoln, and his ability to achieve depth and bypass dogma. He chose Thursday for Thanksgiving because it was not identified with any religion’s worship, thus could be a shared, secular holiday. Yet his Second Inaugural is a near-sacred text, as respected for its theological depth as for its utter absence of malice. “Let us strive to finish the work we are in,” he said gently, “to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.” He named no sides, assigned no blame, allowed no gloating.
Old-fashioned etiquette? Hardly. The day Lincoln died, a crowd in New Haven was whistling and clapping as Dr. William Patton said, “Yes, vengeance belongs to God, but he has human instruments to carry out his vengeance. He will not allow this land to be polluted with the innocent blood unavenged, shed by these rebels. We must wipe it out. . . .”
Lincoln was the exception, not the norm. He refused to bleach or blacken truth’s shades of gray. As a Congressman in 1846, he would not agree that blood was shed “on American soil” when it was shed on disputed territory. As president, he kept peace with Great Britain during the Trent Affair by suggesting compromise and international arbitration.
One cannot imagine him labeling entire nations an “axis of evil.” Seizing upon spurious evidence of weapons of mass destruction and purchases of uranium to bolster his agenda. Asking the American people for more than $160 billion for that war, while cutting taxes neatly for the wealthiest 10 percent.
In the opinion of theologian Martin Marty, “The problem isn’t with Bush’s sincerity, but with his evident conviction that he’s doing God’s will.”
Lincoln once confessed, “I do not think myself fit for the Presidency,” and although he spent much of his life trying to divine God’s will, he had no patience with those who presumed to know it. In his “Meditation on the Divine Will,” he wrote, “In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.” He did not see the United States as a chosen nation; instead, he concluded his Second Inaugural by remarking that our country’s progress was “as nothing compared to the mysterious will of God.”
When columnist Sam Cook imagined camping with Bush and Dick Cheney in the arctic wilderness, where they would be awed into humility by its beauty, he shook himself awake: “They would look out over that amazing play of land and think, with all that country, what’s the big deal about a drilling pad over in one corner?” Bush has withdrawn from a long list of international treaties, turning the country’s back on global warming, germ warfare and international war crimes. Instead of collaborating, we’re talking about “imperialism,” a word that was once vilified by Americans, but in the Bush administration, has a certain cachet.
Except that we all know what happens to empires.
That’s what frightens me most about the tenor of this administration. We all know, deep down, that any human being, any nation, any ideology, is flawed. Humility is accurate, and therefore trustworthy. Bravado requires lies, to the world and to oneself.
Lincoln might have laid a large-knuckled hand on Bush’s shoulder and murmured a few cautions, but he would have known better than to press the point. “Men are not flattered,” he once observed, “by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.”
Besides, it’s easier to struggle upward from humble origins than to be born
with no excuse for failure — and a definition of victory so shallow, it leaves
the rest of us little for which to give thanks.
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2003.
