Whole Lotta Lincoln

John McCain calls the Republican Party the "party of Lincoln." Hillary Clinton asked for Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with no moderator. Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy while standing before the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., where Abraham Lincoln delivered his 1858 "House Divided" speech against slavery. The 16th president is more popular than ever with politicians—and with everyone else. And that's before all the hoopla begins around his birthday bicentennial on Feb. 12, 2009. "You hear more Lincoln in this campaign, more name-dropping of Lincoln. It's never been like this," says Harold Holzer, author of "Lincoln at Cooper Union" and co-chair of the congressionally created Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

The candidates' name-dropping about Honest Abe is just the beginning. Steven Spielberg is working on a movie starring Liam Neeson. Next year the U.S. Mint will issue new pennies with four different "tails"—for Lincoln's four residences (Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Washington, D.C.). Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, is undergoing a renovation and plans to reopen in February 2009 with a new play about the president's life. The Library of Congress is mounting a traveling exhibit. Seventeen states now boast their own bicentennial commissions, which are planning town halls and recreations of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Many universities and libraries are holding Lincoln-related forums on issues like race relations. Scholars are publishing a slew of new books. Philadelphia is re-enacting a giant fair that Lincoln attended. School kids are entering a contest to debate whether Lincoln or Washington was the greatest president. And libraries, museums and universities are competing for a $20 million collection of Lincoln artifacts—including coveted copies of his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the slavery-ending Thirteenth Amendment—now in the collection of the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Ind., which is closing at the end of June.

Bookstores will be brimming with dozens of new tomes about the man who held the country together and abolished slavery, largely through his powerful speeches. "He changed America's views through his verbiage and thoughts," says Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago and an adviser to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. "The verbiage that Lincoln gave at the Gettysburg Address and the second inaugural outlined who we were as a nation and how we changed from several states to a United States."

New books about Lincoln are never in scarce supply. But scholars have been working overtime to produce a new round of books in time for the 200th birthday celebration. Holzer has no fewer than three new titles. "Lincoln President Elect" arrives in late October and shows how Lincoln "faced the most dangerous transition period in American history," Holzer says. He is also coediting "In Lincoln's Hand," a companion volume to the Library of Congress's big Lincoln 200 exhibition that opens Feb. 12. It will include scanned reproductions of original Lincoln letters and speeches, each with a comment by a prominent politician or writer—including Toni Morrison (on the Gettysburg Address), John Updike, Mario Cuomo, Newt Gingrich, Gore Vidal and NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter. And for the Library of America, Holzer is editing "The Lincoln Anthology," a collection of 85 writers on Lincoln's life and legacy.

Late this fall the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation will publish "Lincoln in Illinois," with photos of 50 Lincoln statues in the state and commentaries by scholars and politicians, including Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson Jr., Adlai Stevenson III and NEWSWEEK editor Jon Meacham. Also in the fall, Johns Hopkins University Press will publish "Abraham Lincoln: A Life," by scholar Michael Burlingame. Timed for the bicentennial, the book examines how Lincoln overcame what Burlingame calls "psychological poverty." His mother died when he was nine. He lost two bids for the U.S. Senate. Two of his four children died when they were young. "And yet with all this, he managed to become the psychologically mature man we can all emulate." Burlingame, himself the author of numerous books on Lincoln, applauds all the hoopla. "Anything that helps to create more interest in Lincoln is fine by me," he says.

That includes Spielberg's Lincoln movie, which has not yet started shooting. Scholars believe the famous director will do justice to the president—though it's important that Neeson change his voice. "Lincoln had a high, Midwest twang voice with Southern in it," says Weinberg. "One of the reasons he could be heard above a crowd was that he had a higher voice."

Scholars are also eagerly awaiting the decision on who will get the extensive Fort Wayne collection of books, photographs, signed documents and other artifacts after the Lincoln Financial Foundation closes its museum there at the end of next month. The foundation is accepting proposals from more than a dozen institutions and groups, and the Lincoln Financial Group will announce its decision this fall. "Our main goal is to get better visibility for the collection," says Lincoln Financial Group spokeswoman Annette Moser. The Lincoln Financial Group plans to give the collection away. "It's not about money, not at all," says Moser. "It's truly our intention to get these items into the hands of someone who can gain better visibility for them and properly take care of them to ensure another 200 years of exposure for these things."