The Great Inspirer

But Truman saw in Lincoln what he wanted to see. For him, Lincoln had the "guts" to do "the right thing" against "a great big opposition." He noted that had Lincoln been more timid, "we would have been divided into half a dozen countries."

For other presidents, Lincoln has been an inexhaustible quote machine. In an Oval Office speech in April 1974, Richard Nixon reminded the nation that his first Republican predecessor had said, "If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything." This was to justify his conduct in the Watergate scandal.

In 1992 Ronald Reagan told the Republican convention, "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich." Reagan could not know that his speechwriters had unwittingly saddled him with a well-circulated counterfeit Lincoln quotation. (The words were actually written by a conservative preacher decades after Lincoln's death.)

During his struggles for civil and voting rights, Lyndon Johnson might have been expected to seek inspiration from the Great Emancipator—but, alas, history was not LBJ's forte. Amazingly enough, during one of his famous tape-recorded telephone calls in 1964, Johnson told a friend: "Remember this—Lincoln went back to Springfield, Mo., after he was president … He said there wasn't one person in it that would speak to him."

Too few presidents have steeped themselves not just in Lincoln's words, but his deeds, which is why Obama's acquaintance with the great man is so compelling—especially since, like President-elect Lincoln, Obama will take office at a perilous time. Obama knows that he will have to make excruciating choices and, just like Franklin Roosevelt, for this he can find succor in Lincoln. In the summer of 1940, as Hitler marched through Europe, FDR was poring through Carl Sandburg's newly published history of Lincoln as war leader.

During an off-the-record White House meeting, a young man upbraided Roosevelt for ditching New Deal reforms to prepare Americans for war. Roosevelt said: "Young man, I think you are very sincere. Have you read Carl Sandburg's 'Lincoln'? … Lincoln was one of the unfortunate people called a 'politician' … He was sad because he couldn't get it all at once. And nobody can!"

Presidential historian Beschloss is the author, most recently, of “Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 17891989.”

© 2008