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Why 2012 looks like
1860
By Star Parker
6/6/2011
As the season of presidential politics 2012 unfolds, I’m struck by
similarities between today and the tumultuous period in our history
that led up to the election of Abraham Lincoln and then on to the Civil
War.
So much so that I’m finding it a little eerie that this year we are
observing the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War.
No, I am certainly not predicting, God forbid, that today’s divisions
and tensions will lead to brother taking up arms against brother.
But profound differences divide us today, as was the case in the 1850’s.
The difference in presidential approval rates between Democrats and
Republicans over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few
years of the Bush presidency has been in the neighborhood of 70 points.
This is the most polarized the nation has been in modern times.
This deep division is driven, as was the case in the 1850’s, by
fundamental differences in world view regarding what this country is
about.
Then, of course, the question was can a country “conceived in liberty’,
in Lincoln’s words, tolerate slavery.
Today the question is can a country “conceived in liberty” tolerate
almost half its economy consumed by government, its citizens
increasingly submitting to the dictates of bureaucrats, and wanton
destruction of its unborn children.
We wrestle today, as they did then, with the basic question of what
defines a free society.
It’s common to hear that “democracy” is synonymous with freedom. We
also commonly hear that questions regarding economic growth are
separate and apart from issues tied to morality – so called “social
issues.”
But Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858,
argued both these points. In championing the idea of “popular
sovereignty” and the Kansas Nebraska Act, he argued that it made sense
for new states to determine by popular vote whether they would permit
slavery.
By so doing, argued Douglas, the question of slavery would submit to
what he saw as the core American institution – democracy – and, by
handling the issue in this fashion, slavery could be removed as an
impediment to growth of the union.
Lincoln rejected submitting slavery to the vote, arguing that there are
first and inviolable principles of right and wrong on which this nation
stands and which cannot be separated from any issue, including
considerations of growth and expansion.
The years of the 1850’s saw the demise of a major political party – the
Whigs – and the birth of another – the Republican Party. And the
Democratic Party, in the election of 1860, splintered into two.
In a Gallup poll of several weeks ago, 52 percent said that neither
political party adequately represents the American people and that we
need a third party. Of the 52 percent, 68 percent were Independents, 52
percent Republicans, and 33 percent Democrats.
So it’s not surprising that the field of Republicans emerging as
possible presidential candidates is wide, diverse, and unconventional.
But another lesson to be learned from 1860 is that conventional wisdom
of establishment pundits is not necessarily reliable.
These pundits will explain why the more unconventional stated and
potential candidates in the Republican field – Cain, Palin, or Bachmann
– don’t have a chance and why we should expect Romney, Pawlenty, or
Huntsman.
But going into the Republican Convention in Chicago in 1860, the
expected candidate to grab the nomination was former governor and
Senator from New York, William H. Seward.
But emerging victorious on the third ballot at the convention was a
gangly country lawyer, whose only previous experience in national
office was one term in the US congress, to which he was elected
fourteen years earlier.
A year or two earlier, no one, except Lincoln himself, would have
expected that he would become president of the United States.
Read it at Townhall
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