THE REAL LINCOLN - AT 11:09 A.M. ET:  We don't use words like "wisdom" very much.  We seem to have replaced it with "education" or "SAT scores."  It is not wisdom we usually look to in this age, but diplomas and degrees.  This, to some extent, represents the triumph of the edutocracy.

But when we think of Lincoln, we think of wisdom, not education.  The man, after all, had a year of formal schooling. 

There's a wonderful, small-town editor out west named Frank Miele.  I don't quote him enough.  He's managing editor of Montana's Daily Inter Lake, and he appreciates wisdom, not merely letters after names.  Today he notes that President Obama is fond of referring to Lincoln, and some borderline nutbag fans are already comparing Obama to President Lincoln.  But which Lincoln?  Miele quotes Lincoln on the subject of genius, of very bright men who know they're very bright men, and it's a cautionary tale for our current present, who has surrounded himself with the brightest and the even brighter.  Frank Miele:

"Towering genius disdains a beaten path." Lincoln warns us. "It seeks regions hitherto unexplored... It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen."

That is an interesting turn of phrase, isn't it? Lincoln would have us believe that for the towering genius, the primary goal is to make a mark on history. Whether for good or ill does not matter.

Thus, Lincoln notes the responsibility of "we the people" to be on guard. "Men of ambition and talents' will continue to spring up among us, he warns -- men comparable to "an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon" -- and, when they do, "they will... naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them... Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs."

COMMENT:  We have a lot of towering geniuses running around Washington these days.  They know alot and think alot.  They think about what they know.

Harry Truman once said that you can't tell an expert anything because then he's not an expert anymore.  Truman would overrule "experts" routinely because he saw things they refused to see. 

President Obama worships at the altar of intellect and education, but he has little practical experience.  The lack of experience is starting to show.  He should have listened to the ghostly voice of Sam Rayburn, who warned then Vice President Lyndon Johnson about all the intellects surrounding the new president, John F. Kennedy.  We referred to Rayburn's warning earlier in the week.  He lamented that he wished one of the men around Kennedy had run for sheriff.

The president reveres Lincoln.  He might read him the way Frank Miele reads him, in some detail.  Lincoln was truly one of our most intellectual presidents, not because of letters or test scores, but because of the wisdom he brought to his life's work.  His warning about men of genius is part of that wisdom.  Read again, Mr. Obama.

July 12, 2009