Bush, in his 'God talk,' should take cues from Lincoln

For some time Karl Rove has sought to compare the presidency of George W. Bush to that of William McKinley (interestingly, the first President to engage actively in the quest for overseas empire), but one wonders whether a more difficult war and reconstruction in Iraq will cause President Bush to begin thinking more about the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Any President who decides to send troops into combat, who is forced to contemplate the terrible responsibility of putting one's fellow citizens in harm's way, and inevitably who must offer speeches in memorial tribute to fallen soldiers perhaps unavoidably must reflect on how it must have been to be Lincoln after Bull Run, after Antietam, and at the cemetery at Gettysburg. The awesome loneliness of the Office must come home then, and one marvels little at the deep etchings in the face of Lincoln after only four years in office.

One hopes that the President will turn to Lincoln for inspiration, for it might surprise him what he finds there. For he will encounter Lincoln's Second Inaugural address, the most extraordinary and profound reflection by a statesman about the nature of war, the nature of politics, and the place of humankind in God's divine plan. On the verge of victory against the South, Lincoln had every right to claim the sweetest spoil of war: the cry of victory. Phrases such as those one hears from President Bush were available to him: "our cause is just," "God is not neutral," "May God bless the United States of America." Lincoln did not speak in this manner, but instead reflected on the role of the South and the North in bringing about the war, and the different purposes that God might have from those of humanity.

Both sides invoked God in their conflict, but God did not fully answer the prayers of either side: "The Almighty has His own purposes." If He gave the terrible war to both the North and the South alike as "a woe due to those by whom the offense came" — the North and South — "shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?" Can we be disappointed at the trials inflicted upon us when we know we are in the right? Or must we fight on behalf of the right "as God gives us to see the right" — a distant claim from knowing unimpeachably that we are in the right and that God is on our side? Is not the very invocation of God's aid accompanied by the need to recognize that our own trials are a woe inflicted upon us for our own participation in creating and supporting the offences now being fought against?

In a letter to an admirer, Lincoln wrote the following about his brief Second Inaugural: "I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference in purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth that needed to be told; and as whatever humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself."

For all of the complaints about the "God talk" in the words of George W. Bush, I have yet to see enough of such words, or at least words of the sort offered by Lincoln in 1865. One hopes that President Bush too will come to acknowledge the difference between the ways of God and those of man, to acknowledge our own faults and responsibility in this time of trial, and finally to strive for "a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."