It's been so long since we had a President with an appreciation of what this country---this nation---means, and how important our history is to what we are today, that every time he speaks seems to be an astounding event. The comparison of our new President's speeches to the movie bromides and fractured histories of Ronald Reagan are just further evidence of the inability of so many (at least so many of those who appear on cable tv) to be able to tell the difference between someone playing the part of a leader and an actual one.


We got three of these remarkable moments this week: the "town hall" events in Elkhart, Indiana and the same Fort Myers, Florida where the Red Sox pitchers and catchers showed up the next day. Here was the President in two places which did not support his election but where the same people who voted for his opponent came to hear him explain how we can together recover from the situation we find ourselves in after the mess made by a government elected by fear, pandering, slogans, and other distractions which successfully obscured what was a malicious program to enrich the already well off at the expense of the rest of us.

During last year's campaign, the current President was often ridiculed as someone who could only give a good speech, but did not understand that words were not enough.
Those critics did not understand that action must be inspired by words: not words that pussyfoot around the point, that try to avoid the issue, but that make the argument that supports what needs to be done.

Such as this, from Elkhart and Fort Myers:

We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place - and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November. ... This crisis has been a long time in the making, and we know that we cannot turn it around overnight. Recovery will likely be measured in years, not weeks or months. But we also know that our economy will be stronger for generations to come if we commit ourselves to the work that needs to be done today.

or this from the city that Red Sox fans call "The Fort":

I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster. Doing nothing is not an option.

And with all but three Republicans voting to do nothing, since they could not just continue on the same road that got us to this point, Congress did, indeed, do something.

It surely was not enough, as Paul Krugman has explained. And Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff most of us know as "Josh Lyman," has acknowledged the lessons the admininstration learned over the past few weeks. But, as Dr Krugman has also explained, the Congress is filled with people who are out of their minds and, by definition, reason does not work well with that crowd.

Yet despite this sad reality, I found the most remarkable of the remarkable essays delivered by the President this week to be the one he gave in Springfield in honor of our 16th President, a man our current President deeply admires for the obviously good reasons with we are all familiar.

These were not the Reagan bromides, though, trying to paraphrase, say, Henry Fonda as President Lincoln. No, this was a President who knows what it means to serve in that office, and what his and our responsibilities are to one another and to our nation.

Yes, he quoted Mr. Lincoln, and a famous line at that:

"The legitimate object of government," he wrote, "is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves."

but the point he made, and one he acknowledged could not be proven as right or wrong, has the greatest of meaning for us, in this time. He argued that Abraham Lincoln

recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can - in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do.

Only a union could harness the courage of our pioneers to settle the American west, which is why he passed a Homestead Act giving a tract of land to anyone seeking a stake in our growing economy.

Only a union could foster the ingenuity of our farmers, which is why he set up land-grant colleges that taught them how to make the most of their land while giving their children an education that let them dream the American dream.

Only a union could speed our expansion and connect our coasts with a transcontinental railroad, and so, even in the midst of civil war, he built one. He fueled new enterprises with a national currency, spurred innovation, and ignited America's imagination with a national academy of sciences, believing we must, as he put it, add "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery...of new and useful things." And on this day, that is also the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth, let us renew that commitment to science and innovation once more

Only a union could serve the hopes of every citizen - to knock down the barriers to opportunity and give each and every person the chance to pursue the American dream. Lincoln understood what Washington understood when he led farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers to rise up against an empire. What Roosevelt understood when he lifted us from Depression, built an arsenal of democracy, and created the largest middle-class in history with the GI Bill. It's what Kennedy understood when he sent us to the moon

.

We are all familiar with those twin maps after the 2004 election showing the nation divided in President Lincoln's time:


















and the one showing how the 2004 election was decided:













and there is still, of course, a lot of truth to this centuries long division. It makes one wonder whether we would have been better off if Honest Abe just waved goodbye to Them, but the truth is that we need to come together, throw out the clowns in Washington who feed on our differences and, guided by the examples of the great Presidents our current President honored in his remarks in Springfield, Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy

go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.