Raymond J. de Souza: Oration’s depressing slide from Lincoln to Trump

Abraham Lincoln, seen in a photograph from 1863, would be both embarrassed and perplexed by Donald Trump's "oratorical dyspepsia," writes Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. Photo by NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY / Alex Brandon / AP

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LINCOLN CITY, INDIANA — How should presidents speak in times of war?

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While born in Kentucky and spending his adult life in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln lived on a farm here from age seven to 21. He came to Indiana as a boy and left as a man.

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Thomas Lincoln moved his family here in 1816, and his wife, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died in 1818, when their son Abraham was only nine years old. Thomas would remarry, and the young Lincoln would grow up with his stepmother and her children, along with his own siblings, working hard on the farm. The precocious boy would school himself, reading whatever he could get his hands on, as he would later teach himself the law.

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The Indiana memorial is very modest, really just a small museum, adorned as all Lincoln memorials are with quotations from his greatest speeches — the first and second inaugurals, the Gettysburg address.

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It is a fitting place to think about how presidents ought to speak in times of war. There has been something of a decline from the 16th president to the 47th, from Lincoln to Donald Trump. History moves on, but does not always progress.

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Lincoln made arguments, sustained arguments, over many years of campaigning and while president about the necessity of war, the aims of war, and the conduct of war. His great wartime addresses were soaring; they were the exception. The workaday task of a democratic leader, as Lincoln understood well, was not only to inspire citizens or rally voters, but to inform and persuade. The people have a right to know for what just cause they are fighting, and why it is necessary.

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Trump flailed about this week, launching an ad hominem attack on Pope Leo XIV and then another ad hominem attack on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for preferring the Holy Father’s exhortations for peace to Trump’s eruptions for war. Lincoln would be embarrassed for the Union that the office he ennobled and elevated is now degraded and diminished by Trump, but more than that, he would be perplexed.

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How does a president planning a war not prepare the people who are to fight it, and the population who will suffer its human losses and political and economic disruptions? How does a president at war not offer words of confidence and clarity about the purpose of the war, of competent command in strategy, of comfort and consolation for the suffering?

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More than 10 years into the Trump oratorical dyspepsia, there is widespread resignation that Trump is just being Trump, and that a man who delights in the death of those he dislikes cannot be expected to do better.

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The lesson of the Lincoln boyhood memorial is rather different. Even from the most humble beginnings — without even a school to attend — it is possible for great leaders to demand excellence of themselves, as the minimum required of those who would be so bold as to lead others.