What Abraham Lincoln Would Do In Coronavirus Pandemic.

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https://www.pjstar.com/opinion/20200325/...s-pandemic


"The coronavirus pandemic is not the Civil War. Not even close. But the anxiety is just as real and the losses just as heartbreaking. Were Abraham Lincoln facing this crisis now he would:

• Listen to experts. At the outset of the war he put his own ego aside and gathered people around him who knew more than him. As Doris Kearns Goodwin has shown in her book "Team of Rivals" (2005), Lincoln expected from them not obedience, but truth and honest debate.

• Insist on being smart, not emotional. As the country was reeling toward Civil War, Lincoln said, "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Disenthrall is still the perfect word — to break our enslavement to fear, selfishness and partisanship.

• Encourage everyone to step up. In asking the country to do what was required to "flatten the curve," Lincoln would appeal to the "better angels" of our nature. It's what he asked Americans to reflect upon in the days leading up to the Civil War.


Commentary: What Abraham Lincoln would do in the coronavirus pandemic
By Mark B. Pohlad
Posted Mar 25, 2020 at 9:37 AM
Updated Mar 25, 2020 at 10:32 AM

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The coronavirus pandemic is not the Civil War. Not even close. But the anxiety is just as real and the losses just as heartbreaking. Were Abraham Lincoln facing this crisis now he would:

• Listen to experts. At the outset of the war he put his own ego aside and gathered people around him who knew more than him. As Doris Kearns Goodwin has shown in her book "Team of Rivals" (2005), Lincoln expected from them not obedience, but truth and honest debate.

• Insist on being smart, not emotional. As the country was reeling toward Civil War, Lincoln said, "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Disenthrall is still the perfect word — to break our enslavement to fear, selfishness and partisanship.

• Encourage everyone to step up. In asking the country to do what was required to "flatten the curve," Lincoln would appeal to the "better angels" of our nature. It's what he asked Americans to reflect upon in the days leading up to the Civil War.


• Look after his family's welfare. Like the rest of us, he would do anything to keep his own safe and healthy. Would he have stockpiled toilet paper, food and water? Maybe at first. Then he would have examined the "me-first" logic of it and stopped.

• Hate being quarantined. He would be hugely put out. So would Mary, who loved to shop and socialize. The theater productions and concerts Lincoln loved so much would be cancelled along with White House receptions, events and speeches. Social distancing and quarantining would agonize him, but he would order it.

• Probably become infected himself. He was irresistibly drawn to people. Even the way he shook hands — grabbing theirs with both of his own — would practically guarantee his infection. But once sick he would model how to be selfless and brave hearted. The example of Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks — a distant relative of Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks — comes to mind.

• Most likely recover. He was 56 when he died. He never smoked, was not known to have any chronic respiratory illnesses and was in relatively good health otherwise.


• Continue working. Even during the monstrous war, there was much to be done, including work on projects already underway. The Morrill Act of 1862 established land and resources for colleges all across the country. And In 1863, the worst year of the Civil War, the Transcontinental Railroad became a reality.

• Act as Comforter-in-Chief. When asked for some reassuring, eternal truth, Lincoln observed all things, even the Civil War — and by extension the pandemic — must pass. In his Second Inaugural, the poet in him put it this way, "Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge ... may speedily pass away."

• Care for and then prepare. Lincoln would commit to the welfare of the victims, just as he promised at the end of the Civil War "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan." He would also prepare for the next crisis, as when he insisted on passing the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery before the Civil War ended so it could never return.

• Recognize life will be different afterward. Lincoln knew Reconstruction would bring unimagined challenges. But finger-pointing and retribution were not his strategy. Neither should it be ours.

Lincoln tells us we'll survive the pandemic by summoning up our "better angels."