Here is a commentary, from August, by former White House correspondent Christi Parsons; condensed by me:
They might seem like a president’s performative gestures: A quiet visit with a wounded soldier’s wife. A conversation with a battlefield nurse or a kitchen worker. A hand extended to a Black woman who had been enslaved.
Abraham Lincoln didn’t publicize these moments. Even as he held the Union together with the force of his will — even as he buried his own child and bore the weight of a nation at war — he made time for mercy. He listened to the voices of those without power, a practice that steeled him for wielding his own.
Empathy is getting a bad rap these days. Elon Musk declared it the “fundamental weakness” of Western civilization, summing up the ethos of the administration. Even those who defend empathy speak of it mainly as a private virtue.
But in the hands of a great leader, empathy can become a powerful political force. Whenever America has begun to fray — during war, depression, civil upheaval — the country has rallied behind a president who focused on the disenfranchised. If we’re to survive our current crisis of division, our civic leaders need to do the same. And, as citizens, so do we.
How did Lincoln cultivate the trait of empathy? Partly by surrounding himself with compassionate people. That’s according to “Loving Lincoln,” a new biography examining his story through the lives of women who were his key influencers. Which, historian Stacy Lynn writes, “offer evidence of Lincoln’s kindness and sensitivity, his patience, his moral center, his social and political virtues, the breadth of his compassion, and his inspirational legacy.” His White House became a place of mercy and goodwill.
President Lincoln welcomed Black people there. Urged to visit camps where newly freed families lived, he went. To meet the gaze of all these people, to shake their hands, to give them audience — these were not symbolic gestures. They were radical acts of inclusion. Meaningful for us today, in our moment of deep national division.
Lincoln spoke publicly of the need for love and compassion. He surrounded himself with confidantes who embraced it. And he took action on it, emancipating millions from bondage.
In the grand scheme of things, it was just a few years ago that Lincoln led our country through something much worse than what we’re now experiencing. Then he spoke of binding up our wounds, “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” How powerfully his words land in our hearts today.
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This commentary, predating Trump’s vile response to the Reiner murder, and Minneapolis atrocities, so aptly highlights how we’ve gone off the rails. The stark contrast between Lincoln and Trump shows how character matters. All human history can be seen as the story of how we view and treat each other. This is my humanism speaking: feeling myself part of a great striving to lift ourselves up. All of us.
This was Lincoln’s ethos. I had believed it was, most fundamentally, America’s. But while Lincoln remains a plaster icon, few Americans today understand what he truly represented. We’ve turned our backs on it by empowering his total antithesis. Summoning not “the better angels of our nature,” but our demons.
