![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cdn.eurweb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/lincoln-movie-poster-crop.jpeg\")
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Just saw the Steven Spielberg<\/strong> epic Lincoln<\/a>. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The performance of Daniel Day-Lewis<\/strong>\u00a0as Abraham Lincoln<\/strong> was titanic; all the anger and villainous darkness he channeled into his earlier memorable characters Bill “the Butcher”<\/strong> <\/a>and Daniel Plainview<\/a> <\/strong>are eclipsed in his Lincoln by wisdom and a transcendent, melancholic grace. The supporting cast was equally strong, with Sally Fields <\/strong>alluding in word and deed to the shrewish madness that troubled\u00a0First Lady\u00a0Mary Todd Lincoln<\/a>; Tommy Lee Jones<\/strong>\u00a0humanized – probably more than is historical – the implacable political ferocity of Radical Republican<\/strong> leader Representative Thaddeus Stevens<\/a>;<\/strong> and James Spader<\/strong> added lighthearted realism as Secretary of State Seward’s<\/strong> cagey political fixer and bagman, William N. Bilboe.<\/strong><\/p>\n Spielberg has done a magnificent storytelling of the passage of the 13th Amendment<\/a><\/strong> to abolish slavery in the United States and he has done even better at capturing Lincoln’s towering stature as a statesman. Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is Periclean – in possession of heroic, historical vision and mastery of grand strategy along with an intimate grasp of the granular, grubby mechanics of political deal making and a humane tolerance of other’s frailties needed to make things happen. \u00a0The scene where Day-Lewis explains to his squabbling Cabinet Lincoln’s coup d’oeil<\/a> – \u00a0the real Constitutional, moral, military and political exigencies of emancipation governing the imperative questions of the 13th Amendment – \u00a0is one of the most brilliant expositions of strategy in the fusion of policy, politics and war that I have ever seen on screen.<\/p>\n In a sense, that was the genius of Abraham Lincoln – surpassing his own humble origins to solve herculean problems without ever losing sight that lasting resolution of Civil War and slavery were going to have to occur on Earth with fallible human beings, operating in a political reality that would never be ideal. The limits of vision of Lincoln’s contemporaries, copperhead and abolitionist, is marked but the comparison between Abraham Lincoln and politicians of our own day is yet for the worse. \u00a0Our problems are so much smaller, our resources and capabilities infinitely vaster than the severe test the Republic faced in Lincoln’s time, yet our leaders are grossly inadequate even to these.<\/p>\n Martyrdom naturally magnified the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, but even without the assassination he would have still been reckoned our greatest president, one of the rare individuals whose leadership made an irreplaceable mark upon history. If one of Lincoln’s rivals for the Republican nomination had become president in 1860 instead, or had Lincoln not been re-elected in 1864, the Union cause would have failed. \u00a0We would not be who we are nor the world what it is without a United States in the 20th century to stem the tide of \u00a0first German domination, then Fascism and then Soviet Communism. The world would be a poorer, darker place and we would be lesser peoples of lesser nations of the former United States.<\/p>\n Lincoln’s shadow is not merely long, it is deep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just saw the Steven Spielberg epic Lincoln. \u00a0 The performance of Daniel Day-Lewis\u00a0as Abraham Lincoln was titanic; all the anger and villainous darkness he channeled into his earlier memorable characters Bill “the Butcher” and Daniel Plainview are eclipsed in his Lincoln by wisdom and a transcendent, melancholic grace. The supporting cast was equally strong, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365,698,232,360,361,46,575,476,51,78,492,39,367,67,187,104,603,251,833,381,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19th-century","category-698","category-20th-century","category-21st-century","category-america","category-analytic","category-character","category-democracy","category-history","category-ideas","category-leadership","category-military","category-military-history","category-movies","category-politics","category-reform","category-republic","category-republican-party","category-sacrifice","category-society","category-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17668"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17674,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668\/revisions\/17674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}