I believe that Donald Trump is going down to one of the most crushing defeats in US history.  This will not happen because the majority of Americans disagree with his policies.  There is a certain reasonableness in the desire to get a handle on illegal immigration, grapple with the China trade complexities, end the endless wars, make our allies pay their fair share for defense, and unburden industry from excessive regulations.  Nor will it happen because Biden voters recently found a copy of the Communist Manifesto and lost their minds.  On Tuesday, America is going to hurl “You’re Fired!” back at Trump because he is a dangerously arrogant man, who is dismissive of the laws and the Constitution, and is ruled by passion as opposed to sound judgement.  Through a confluence of crazy circumstances that future historians will earn their PhD’s trying to unravel, a man perilously ill-suited to the job was elected president in 2016.  It will be a good day in a very bad year when such a man is stopped in his tracks.  Just ask Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln may have had the most sensitive heart and the keenest mind of all our presidents. He certainly possessed an intuitive view of the future; almost clairvoyant.  In 1838, at the age of twenty-eight, he delivered a speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield that was titled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”  In this speech Lincoln addressed the three greatest dangers that threatened our country: 1) a willingness to violate the laws and ignore the Constitution, 2) the rise to power of a fame obsessed leader who was willing to tear down the country in order to advance his own celebrity, and 3) excessive passion in our politics.  No foreign power will ever destroy our government, wrote Lincoln, “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Twenty-two years after Lincoln said those words, our country succumbed to two of the dangers he identified.  Little did he know that he himself would be the antithesis of the dangerous leader he feared, and that fact would safe this nation.  It is now one hundred eighty-two years since Lincoln gave his speech, and our country is threatened by all three dangers.

Lincoln’s description of the troubling events of 1838 could, without changing too many words, be applied to our times as well.  Lincoln spoke of the mob violence that was spreading across the country.  He detected an “ill-omen amongst us;” he sensed that a “mobocratic spirit” was spreading across the land.  A government could not last “whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last.”  Although Trump touts himself as the law and order president, and many of his supporters believe that he is the one to reconcile the battling factions in our cities, his personal actions speak louder than his words.  He is a law breaker at heart.   The list is too long and boring, so here is just a quick reminder of his relish for violating the law and hurting people.  He is on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women.  He indicated to police officers it was OK to hurt someone under arrest when he said, “When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head you know, the way you put their hand over [their head… You can take the hand away, OK?.” He told his fans at the rallies that if they see a protester it was OK to “knock the crap out of them” and he would pay their legal fees.  Of course he would also like to punch them in the face himself. He is only against the violence of the people who hate him, he tells his potentially violent supporters to “stand back and stand by.” 

The other great threat to America was the rise of a fame obsessed man to leadership.  Lincoln explained that in the earliest days of the Republic, the seekers of fame found success by supporting our great experiment in liberty.  They found immortality by supporting the newly created institutions. Their personal fame was tied to the success of the young country. Lincoln feared that some future pursuers of glory will arise only to seek their fame by tearing down institutions. “Distinction will be his paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.” Men of ambition will continue to rise up among us, but Lincoln warned that the most dangerous are the ones with outsize egos, who cannot tolerate just working with institutions that had been built by the great men who came before.  Will their “gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot…. An Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon” would never have been satisfied with that. “Towering genius”—stable genius? — “disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored… It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction;… Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”  The American people have recognized Trump’s twisted need for fame and adulation, and “united with each other, attached to the government and laws” will vote him out of office.

Lincoln worried about the “wild and furious passions” that were increasing across the land.   Passion had fired up the American revolutionaries, but at that time and place passion had been necessary.  “The deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation” wrote Lincoln, and this brought about “the advancement of the noblest cause–that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.”  “Sober reason” must be the new pillars. “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more,” warned Lincoln, “it will in future be our enemy.”  Reason, “must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those materials be molded into general intelligence, sound morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.” Trump is not guided by reason or sound morality. He brags that he is guided by his gut: “My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can.”  No reasonable man—no sane man!—would claim that they know more about everything than everybody.  This list is long, but I think rather entertaining:

• “I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.” (1999.)
• “I know more about people who get ratings than anyone.” (October 2012.)
• “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” (November 2015.)
• “I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?” (November 2015.)
• “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.” (November 2015.)
• “[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I’m the king.” (January 2016.)
• “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” (March 2016.)
• “[N]obody knows the [US government] system better than I do.” (April 2016.)
• “I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth.” (April 2016.)
• “I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” (May 2016.)
• “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.” (June 2016.)
• “I understand money better than anybody.” (June 2016.)
• “[L]ook, as a builder, nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump.” (July 2016.)
• “I know more about Cory than he knows about himself.” (July 2016.)
• “I think I know more about [Democrats] than almost anybody.” (November 2016.)
• “[N]obody knows more about construction than I do.” (May 2018.)
• “I think I know more about [the economy] than [the Federal Reserve].” (October 2018.)
• “Technology — nobody knows more about technology than me.” (December 2018.)
• “I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have.” (January 2019.)

Lincoln reminded his listeners that a “general intelligence, sound morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws” would , “furnish all the materials for our future support.” He ended with a poetic flourish about a future judgement day when it would be found “that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last.” He then closed with a sentence that caught my attention.  He spoke of Washington’s grave, and offered the hope “that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place,” and yes, look it up if you don’t believe me, “the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.”