The Weekly 2008

by Rob Grace

Hilary Clinton’s Lincoln-Douglas debate challenge to Obama gave many an opportunity to partake in an age-old American tradition: drooling at the mere mention of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  I quote Blake from Real Clear Politics:

…does anybody, when they really consider this, expect the Clinton-Obama debates to get anywhere near the the level of intellectual depth that was the hallmark of the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Lincoln and Douglas were debating slavery, but more specifically, the spread of slavery into new states, the intention of the founders with regards to slavery, and the future of the union.

In many ways, though, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were just as annoying as our current debates. 

One of the main issues of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate wasn’t slavery, but whether or not Lincoln attended a meeting in Springfield in 1854 that established the platform of the Republican party (the “Black Republican” party, as Douglas called it).  Lincoln said he wasn’t there.  Douglas implied that he was there.  Lincoln repeatedly interrupted Douglas in protest, breaking the rules of the debate, despite the pleading of the Chairman who exclaimed, “I hope no Republican will interrupt Mr. Douglas. The masses listened to Mr. Lincoln attentively, and as respectable men we ought now to hear Mr. Douglas, and without interruption.”  And yet Lincoln persisted as the spectators, deprived of the luxury of factcheck.org and politifact.com, never knew what to accept as truth.

The debate also touched on the Mexican-American War, which Lincoln opposed when he was serving in the House in the 1840s.  For this Douglas accused him of “taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.”  Lincoln replied that though he refused to “vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President… whenever they asked for any money, or land-warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.”

Sound familiar?

They played Gotcha.  Douglas Swift-Boated Lincoln, using the House Divided speech to paint him as an Abolitionist.  And most of the debates consisted of Lincoln trying to prove he was a moderate.  Or in other words, a racist.  Hence Lincoln’s defense of his racist credentials, proclaimed to thunderous applause:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

In the words of one historian:

…students of rhetoric have been more tempted than others to think of the debates as representing a high standard from which American culture has declined. Focusing merely on the manipulation of language to suit an audience makes it easy to overlook sobering historical facts: for example, that the Lincoln-Douglas debates preceded the worst political catastrophe in American history, the Civil War. The debates obviously had little utility in averting that disaster, and the doctrines expressed in them cannot be directly linked to the most worthwhile outcome of that war, the emancipation of some 3.5 million slaves. Seeking the roots of the Emancipation Proclamation in the speeches Lincoln delivered in 1858 has so foiled his defenders that they have often opted, instead, to compliment him for his rapid "growth" in statesmanship as president, years after the debates were over.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, the Clinton-Obama debates would register somewhere between “par for the course” and “comparatively enlightened.”  Perhaps our Lincoln-Douglas nostalgia, expressed through ridicule of our current national dialogue is unwarranted.  Perhaps more fastidious scrutiny is required before we can determine whether public discourse has undergone evolution, devolution, or elements of both.

Comments

[Nat]

They did not teach us that stuff in the Illinois public schools! But a real debate has to be better than what they call debates on the television. That is just one dopey question followed by another!