A Face for Any Age

I was asked the other day, as I have been asked many times before, if Lincoln, given his looks and his antic, unpolitical body, could be elected president in this day and age. The common wisdom is, absolutely not, that this is the age of television when looking presidential on the tube, and everywhere else, is an essential element of electoral success. Ugly doesn't win votes, and Mr. Lincoln was said to be ugly--whatever that means.

He himself rather admitted to it. When Stephen Douglas at one point in their quarter decade political rivalry in Illinois accused him of being two-faced, Lincoln replied, "If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?"

Wear it he did, since he had no other. And he was elected president in spite of it. Whether his looks helped or didn't was a wash. My general opinion, supported by absolutely no facts one way or the other, is that Mr. Lincoln was so bright, so sensitive, so informed, so tuned to the people and to the issues of the times, that no matter how he looked on the relentless tube, he would have made adjustments and probably done quite well. Nobody much thought he could be nominated, let alone elected, back then. But he was, and then four years later reelected. Nobody would think he could be elected today, but he likely could, given his political genius.

This whole thing about being ugly, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to think Lincoln was a very handsome man. And here I am pleased to recount the story of a lady in Lincoln's time who agreed with me.

She was the mother of a soldier, and her soldier-son had been sentenced to death or long imprisonment for a crime with extenuating circumstances. She was one of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens's constituents from Pennsylvania, and he brought her to Lincoln, a very busy man, to plea for his life. After a full hearing on the matter, Lincoln turned to Stevens and asked, "Mr. Stevens, do you think this is a case which will warrant my interference?"

"With my knowledge of the facts and the parties," Stevens replied, "I should have no hesitation in granting a pardon."

"Then," Lincoln said, "I will pardon him."

The mother, overwelmed, with feelings too deep to utter speech, walked in silence out of the White House with Stevens. Part way out she halted, turned to him, and exclaimed, "I knew it was a copperhead lie!" Copperheads were Democrats who vigorously advocated peace with the Confederacy, letting it go independent if necessary with slavery and everything else intact--anything to end the war. They were not exceedingly popular either with Republlicans or Democrats supporting a war to victory a reunited Union.

The mother's sudden statement puzzled Stevens."What do you refer to, Madam?" he asked.

"Why, they told me he was an ugly looking man," she said. "He is the handsomest man I ever saw in my life."

Then as now, beauty--or lack of it--is only skin deep.

Lincoln and Yogi

Lincoln, as everybody knows, was two-faced, even though he told Stephen Douglas "If he had another face, do you think I would wear this one?" But he could have been a poster boy for the two faces of drama--comedy and tragedy. He was at the same time one of the most melancholy, sad-looking of men, and yet one of the most preeminent joke tellers of his time. And not all of his jokes were sanitized.

Breaking through his melancholy--perhaps because of it--would come rib-aching, funny stories. As he admitted, he told jokes, usually very pertinent and tailored to the occasion, in part simply to whistle away sadness in a very sad time in our history. But nobody told a better story or enjoyed it more than Lincoln. Nobody read the comic writers of the time, such as Petroleum V. Nasby, and enjoyed them more, often reading them aloud to the sober-sided Radicals of his party, who only wanted to hear of victories won and slavery undone.

I would loved to have been in Rochester, Illinois, the night of June 16, 1842, when ex-Democratic President Martin Van Buren was touring Illinois. Lincoln, an avid Whig, had campaigned mightily to defeat the "Little Magician" in the presidential election campaign of 1840. Van Buren had lost the election and two years later was touring Illinois. Lincoln's Democratic foes in the state didn't much cotton to his politics, but they prized his way with a story. So their welcoming committee persuaded him to come with them to help entertain Van Buren in Rochester, half a dozen miles from Springfield. Lincoln went, and deep into the night he swapped stories with Van Buren, until, it is said, the ex-president called a halt to ease his sides, aching from laughter.

Lincoln would probably have enjoyed the proliferation of comedy in today's world, both spoken and written. In that connection, when I think of Lincoln and laughter, I somehow think of Yogi Berra, the celebrated Hall of Fame baseball player who perhaps didn't intend what he said to be laugh-provoking. But he is famous for provoking it anyhow. And I do believe Lincoln would have resonated with Yogi.

Who could resist such Yogiisms as, "This guy has fouled up the position so bad, I don't think anybody will ever play it again," or "Nobody goes there anymore; it is too crowded," or "If they don't wanna to come to the ball park, how you gonna stop 'em," or "When you come to a fork in the road, take it," or "We're lost, but we're making good time," or "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours," or his classic "It is deja vu all over again."

Yogi has uttered a lot of wonderful things, even while saying "I really didn't say everything I said." Lincoln would not have been any more able to resist him than we are. The two of them together have might have caved in Van Buren's aching sides altogether.