Let 'Em Up Easy

In early April of 1865, the closing days of the Civil War, President Lincoln visited the recently captured Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia.

As Lincoln looked around the once-great city that had been reduced to smoldering rubble, one of the Union generals asked the president what should be done with the rebels.

Lincoln's advice was a guide for true grace in victory. Unfortunately, it seems to be seldom heeded.

"If I were in your place, I'd let 'em up easy," Lincoln told the general, "let 'em up easy."

I think the meaning was clear. If we are to become one nation again, Lincoln was saying, let's start here, in the Confederates' capital city.

I was reminded of that quote this morning as I read Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times.

"Now Barack Obama faces a true dilemma: how best to punish Hillary Clinton," writes Dowd.

It may be true that the race for the nomination is over, and Obama is the presumptive nominee. But the general election campaign hasn't begun.

And Obama will need the help of Hillary's supporters -- as well as the Democrats who supported other candidates in the earlier primaries -- as part of a much broader coalition if he is to win the election.

He cannot win the election with the coalition that has apparently enabled him to capture the nomination.

Obama injected the word "bitter" into the Democrats' 2008 political discourse. It's a word that seems relevant to the feelings of some Democrats toward Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Even though Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to serve two full terms as president since the end of World War II (so far), there is a residual bitterness among some Democrats.

President Clinton's role in bringing about his impeachment proceedings is responsible, in part. There is no doubt that some Democrats felt betrayed by his actions and viewed the time and effort spent defending the president against impeachment charges as lost opportunities -- including a perceived lost opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden long before the September 11 terrorist attacks or to disrupt preparations for those attacks.

And some Democrats felt betrayed by the perceived selfishness of his 1996 re-election campaign effort, in which President Clinton seemed to abandon some more progressive Democrats on the congressional and gubernatorial ballots in order to more effectively position himself as a centrist.

There are also Democrats who hold President Clinton responsible for the loss of the White House to George W. Bush in 2000.

Dowd poses the question as a way of addressing a different issue, actually. "Is the most ingenious way to turn the screw by not choosing her as his running mate, or by choosing her?" she asks.

And I think she manages to answer her own question by quoting a black woman who supports Hillary. "Americans can’t handle too much change at once."

But Dowd giddily fantasizes in print about how Obama might treat Hillary as the No. 2.

"[H]e could announce that, because Dick Cheney abused the powers of his office so grievously, taking the title 'Vice' literally, he intends to shrink the vice presidency back to its 'bucket of warm spit' Constitutional prerogatives -- presiding over the Senate and taking over if the president goes under anesthesia," Dowd writes.

"He might also neglect to give Bill ... full White House access. Aside from the delight Bill would get from living at the Naval Observatory and having a huge telescope to window-peep with, there wouldn’t be much joy in Hillaryland."

Now, it's true that President Clinton's own mistakes gave Republicans in Congress the excuse to hold the impeachment hearings and trial that consumed his presidency for much of his second term. The words of another president who faced impeachment, Richard Nixon, come to mind. "I gave them a sword," Nixon told David Frost in his famous post-presidential interview.

It's quite possible that this distraction kept the administration from doing its job to prevent the 9-11 attacks. However, the 9-11 Commission reported on various efforts the Clinton administration made to halt bin Laden in the late 1990s, efforts which were inevitably hindered by the intelligence community or the Republican Congress.

It's also true that President Clinton focused most of his attention in the 1996 election campaign on winning re-election and wasn't as much help to Democrats farther down the ballot as previous incumbents have been.

But what is overlooked about the 1996 campaign is that it occurred during what was, realistically, the heyday of the "Reagan Revolution," a time when the movement transcended the man who led it. Ronald Reagan enjoyed great popularity through most of his presidency, but it never translated into complete GOP control of Congress.

In 1994 and 1996, Reagan had ceased to be a figure on the national stage. But the political philosophy he espoused had taken root and spread through a new generation of Republicans.

In previous elections, incumbents like Reagan and Nixon enjoyed large leads in the polls during their re-election campaigns and could afford to give more assistance to members of their party. Their efforts might not have made much difference, but at least they could say they tried to help.

(The decline of the political marriage within the Republican Party could be seen in 2004. Bush was narrowly re-elected, in part because he devoted a lot of his time and energy to campaigning for right-wing congressional candidates. Some of them owe their success to his efforts, but Bush was held to less than 51% of the popular vote in the election -- an uninspiring figure for the re-election of a president in wartime. Two years later, the Democrats recaptured the House and Senate.)

After the Republicans' convincing congressional sweep in 1994, in which the GOP captured nine seats in the Senate and 54 seats in the House (gaining control of both chambers), President Clinton and his campaign staff were clearly concerned about the growing power and influence of the Republican Party. In a bid for re-election, nothing could be taken for granted.

It was a pragmatic decision.

I don't think President Clinton can be blamed for Gore's loss to Bush.

All indicators are that Gore did not make an effort to make President Clinton part of his campaign, therefore squandering a valuable campaign resource that could have reinforced the role he played in building the budget surplus that was in federal coffers when Clinton and Gore left office.

It wasn't President Clinton's fault that Gore became the first major party presidential nominee to fail to win his home state since George McGovern in 1972. And it wasn't Clinton's fault that Gore became the first Democrat to lose West Virginia to a non-incumbent Republican since 1928.

If Gore had won West Virginia or his home state of Tennessee, the outcome in Florida would not have mattered. Gore would have won the electoral vote, with or without Florida.

It was Gore's ineffectiveness as a campaigner that was responsible for that.

In the years that have passed, Gore has prospered via a well-received documentary on global warming that has earned him much -- including a Nobel Prize. And he seems to have settled into a comfortable retirement from political campaigns.

That does not mean the nation has fared so well.

But to hold the Clintons responsible is not fair.

Ultimately, Dowd appears to nix the idea of Hillary Clinton on the same ticket with Obama. That is probably for the best.

Even so, Obama needs to be gracious in his handling of the vanquished within his party.

George McGovern, a super-delegate who previously pledged his support to Clinton but recently announced he was switching to Obama, has said that Obama reminds him of Lincoln.

This would be a good time for Obama to demonstrate those qualities that McGovern finds Lincolnesque.

If the Democrats are to be one party again, this is the time to start.

I urge Obama, let your rivals have their dignity. Don't burn any bridges.

Let 'em up easy.