Article in The Australian

[AussieMick]

Not sure if this link will work ... might be restricted to subscribers.
Its from todays (June 5/6) edition. The first 90% may be of interest only to those rapt with politics ... but the last 10% is great (IMO).

https://theaustralian.smedia.com.au/HTML...ty=ar02200

author :
https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/jbcarroll

[RJNorton]

If you cannot read the article from the link Michael gave, please try this one:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science...fe043390ea

[AussieMick]

If you use Roger's link you'll need to find the article in the Inquirer section , the article has the heading
We see through the rank opportunists, eventually

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Thanks to Roger, I have managed to cut and paste the relevant "10 %" from the article which I found specially great ....

Some victors have been underestimated – for example, US Presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. It is more common, however, for a new leader to be over-estimated, by an electorate tired of the old order, keenly aware of its faults, and driven by the very human hope for something better. The hope that springs eternal is a risky sentiment in politics.

Whatever the circumstances, a new leader will need to grow into the office – some do and some don’t. They will probably not themselves know whether they have the requisite capacity and fortitude. Abraham Lincoln is reported to have been overwhelmed by melancholy doubts in the months between election and assuming the presidency.

The opposite is more common, of someone of monumental ego and grandiose vanity, combined with poor self-knowledge, charging into office, taking for granted that they will be great at the job.

Psychic pressure

One extraordinary exception to Machiavelli’s warning about keeping virtue out of politics was Lincoln. He steered the US through its most traumatic period, the 1861-65 civil war.

Lincoln is revered even more for the singular man he was, symbolised in his frame, standing an angular six foot four in height, shabbily dressed, head characteristically bowed, wild unkempt hair, large nose, face gouged with lines, and punctured with deeply melancholy eyes.

Perhaps most extraordinary was the weight Lincoln bore through the years of his presidency, the phenomenal and relentless psychic pressure of four years of struggle. He had to hold his fractious Republican Party together, split as it was between radical abolitionist and moderate conservative wings. He had to hold his cabinet of advisers together, despite constant bickering and explosive rivalries. He had to repeatedly calm his tortured wife.

During the first two years of the war, which went badly for the Union, he had to familiarise himself with military strategy and find competent generals. He was a shrewd judge of human character and competence, and across a broad front. Some of his speeches are among the finest ever penned.


Lincoln would take the big and difficult decisions on his own, often after long deliberation. Once taken, he would never go back on what he had decided. He was famous for his calm and measured affability; and his upbeat cheerfulness even after the worst reverses of fortune. He never bore grudges, and always tried to reconcile and placate. He embodied his own words: “with malice toward none; with charity for all”. The nation came to love him.

The Lincoln example shows that politics is not just the profane slow and hard boring of hard boards; nor just the profane slugging it out to the death in the boxing ring of parliament, although Lincoln himself spent prodigious energy on drilling hardboards and persuading difficult people.

Politics has a metaphysical dimension, as does most else that humans engage in. Lincoln the man lit up the invisible canopy that hovers over the very mundane murk of politics, lit it up like a night sky of stars emerging from behind storm clouds to flicker over the silent eerie gloom of a just abandoned battlefield.

He inspired a nation in its darkest time, lifting it above the sadness and horror of civil war, and putting an end to the evil of slavery. Humans, to feel at ease in the world, need a sense of right order, and it is the business of politics to ensure that one essential dimension of that order, its social frame, remains firm.

John Carroll is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University.