What Would Lincoln Do?

Today, February 12, is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The future Sixteenth President was born in a hovel in backwoods Kentucky on this day 200 years ago. To mark the occasion there is a tremendous article by David Von Drehle in the new edition of Time Magazine entitled "What Would Lincoln Do?" It's the kind of treatment thoughtful people ought to read. You can find it here.

Naturally, most of the analysis of Barack Obama's historical significance has concentrated on his status as the first black president. That status cannot help but associate him with Lincoln. "And," as Von Drehle writes, "this already keen interest has been further stoked by what Lincoln Bicentennial Commission executive director Eilenn Mackevich calls an 'Obama wind.' The new President, another slender fellow from Illinois, has been busy reading about Lincoln, quoting Lincoln, evoking Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial was among Barack Obama's first stops in Washington, and when Obama was sworn in last month it was, for many, the culmination of a long march that began with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation."

But the Time article asks us to take a look at a different facet of how the two are similar, and that is in economics. "Long before he gave his first speeches about Union or slavery, Lincoln was a crusader on questions of economic development and banking. He cut his political teeth on conditions painfully topical for us today: an economic crash that left the young legislator struggling to shore up a failing bank while arguing for government spending on public works."

He was familiar with the cycles of boom and bust, having seen "major economic crashes" in 1837 and 1857. "He believed that government had a leading role to play in building the infrastructure of a growing economy. But the guiding principle for all of it, the whole reason for the nation's being, was that "equal chance," the humble citizen's right to get ahead." And it was public action that would help make that possible. He saw what had happened in New York with the completion of the Erie Canal connecting the Atlantic with the Great Lakes. "Attacked and derided as government waste, the Erie Canal was carrying more freight within a few years than the entire Mississippi River." It made New York the megalopolis of the continent and brought opportunity to formerly isolated farmers and craftsmen through the ability to use it to "move their produce to distant markets."

In the 1837 crash, "Financial markets froze, government debt soared, public opinion soured on the maneuverings of bankers and the schemes of politicians." Yet, "at the risk of his budding political career, Lincoln struggled to save the canals and the railroads." He maintained, "The way to save the system was to pump more money into it." Like a stalled steam engine, he likened the economy to being at a "dead point." From there, he said, even a single turn is "extremely difficult," but jolt it back to life and it quickly regains momentum.

His activist economic legacy as president was practically unprecedented. Von Drehle points out that Lincoln, "worked an unprecedented economic transformation on the country," marked by "creative finance, large ambition and the spirit of economic advancement." He introduced an income tax, large-scale bond sales, paper currency and new controls on banks to fund the Civil War. In the midst of it he sponsored the Homestead Act, the Morrill Land-Grant College Act and the Transcontinental Railroad. These brilliant initiatives are paying dividends still today. He even continued construction on the Capitol Dome. It is easy to draw the similarities between Abraham Lincoln's public infrastructure and finance activism and that which Barack Obama seeks to do in the difficult straits of 2009.

No doubt Old Abe would be fascinated if he could come back today and see the first president of African descent ensconced in his former digs. He would surely be proud to learn the fellow is from Illinois. But he might be just as gratified to see his twenty-first century successor turning to the same kinds of opportunity and stimulus-creating ideas he pioneered back then, and against opposition just as dead-set against the very principles. It is easy to imagine the Rail Splitter nodding that big, shaggy head of his in approval.