The skill we’re sometimes told to forget
On building a political majority—and dealing with people we believe to be wrong.
Yesterday I wrote you at the midpoint of the Abraham Lincoln Symposium, a gathering of writers and scholars at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. As soon as I finished my letter to you, I plunged back in; and the discussion that afternoon turned from the history of Lincoln to “the fierce urgency of now,” as Martin Luther King called it.
Lucas Morel—a writer and professor at Washington and Lee University—led a discussion of all the panelists, on a stage overlooked by the flag-draped presidential box where Lincoln was shot in 1865.
Morel had an exchange with Callie Hawkins, director of programming at the Lincoln Cottage in Washington, about the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, which will come on July 4, 2026.
This, they said, is the “semiquincentennial,” a word I’d never heard before. I had to look it up afterward. Semi means half, quin means five, and centennial is a hundred, so this word means half of five hundred, or put another way, halfway to five hundred. That has a built-in optimism to it, looking forward to another 250 years.
Self-portrait at Lincoln restaurant, Washington.
Yet Morel and Hawkins acknowledged that the plans for the celebration have encountered some trouble in recent years. Heightened attention to the Founders’ failure to end slavery has discredited some Founders, blemished others, and raised questions about what the founding really means to this ever-more-diverse nation.
Unsurprisingly, the panelists on stage essentially took Lincoln’s view of the Founders: that they created a republic on the principle of equality, and left it to later generations to continue the work. Here’s a quote that is often on my mind: In the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Lincoln said the idea of equality was never “perfectly attained,” but could be “constantly approximated” in ways that added to “the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
As the scholars spoke, it occurred to me that this fall’s election, in 2024, will determine who is president on the nation’s 250th birthday.
Lincoln is relevant to this election year because he was a politician in a divided nation. (“My Lincoln is totally political,” said Lincoln historian Sidney Blumenthal, who attended the Symposium and chatted with me away from the stage.) To govern in a time of civil war, he had to do all he could to build a majority political coalition. He didn’t make friends with everyone—he went to war!—but did have to maintain his majority. His efforts are the central concern of Differ We Must.
We discussed this on stage, and Martin Pengelly of the Guardian took down a few of my remarks.
I did feel like Lincoln had something to say, and… it has to do with dealing with differences in a fractured society. And it has to do with building a political majority, which is a skill that I think some of us perhaps have forgotten, or we’re being told to forget.
And part of building a political majority is making alliances with people you believe to be wrong. And hopefully you don’t believe they’re wrong on everything. But maybe out of 10 things, you think they’re very wrong about three things and can find some way to agree on some of the other seven and move forward and at least agree fundamentally on the idea that we have a constitution, we have a republic, we have a democracy. We have a system to mediate our differences. We have institutions and we should uphold them.
Regular readers here will know the objections some people raise to this thinking (for example, “Why should I work with someone who denies my humanity?”). The answer, I think, lies in the nature of democracy. You don’t have to ally with everyone. You do need to build a majority. Otherwise, you lose your cause—or your democracy.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly on the Symposium
The Wall Street Journal from 2023 on the semiquincentennial commission (paywall)
Philadelphia Magazine from 2022 on the semiquincentennial
Saturday’s note from the Symposium—on writing about women and people of color in history
It's strange, isn't it? When citing the preamble of the Constitution, all too many people focus on the phrase "We the People" (which itself connotes the idea of working *together* as Americans). But we often gloss over the rest of the phrase: “in Order to form a more perfect Union.”
Note that the Founding Fathers acknowledged their faults in a very subtle manner: It’s not “perfect.” It’s “more perfect.” Moving toward perfection. Never quite attaining it, but always striving, while remaining true to our purpose.
https://www.timelesstimely.com/p/imperfect-and-incomplete
In my time as an executive at Ford, when faced with obstacles, we were always challenged to return with “a better plan.” That spirit of constant improvement is what our founders bequeathed to us, and we ought to strive to be better ancestors by committing to improve for the sake of future generations.
And doing it *together*.