Did Hillary Clinton Seriously Blame Abraham Lincoln For Her ‘Two-Faced’ Tactics?
Let’s explore
During this past Sunday’s Second 2016 Presidential Debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Abraham Lincoln came up when Hillary Clinton was asked about the moral propriety of being a “two-faced” politician. Here is the full transcript of the second presidential debate, but this is the relevant exchange:
Martha Raddatz: This question involves WikiLeaks’ release of purported excerpts of Secretary Clinton’s paid speeches, speeches which she has refused to release. In one line in particular, in which you Secretary Clinton purportedly say, ‘You need both a public and private position on certain issues.’ So, [Tu] from Virginia asks: “Is it okay for politicians to be two-faced? Is it acceptable for a politician to have a private stance on issues?” Secretary Clinton? Two minutes.
Now before we get to Hillary’s answer, let’s go back and take a look at the original quote that the questioner was referring to, provided courtesy of WikiLeaks as Hillary Clinton refuses to release these transcripts on her own:
Hillary Clinton: You just have to sort of figure out how to — getting back to that word, “balance” — how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that’s not just a comment about today. That, I think, has probably been true for all of our history, and if you saw the Spielberg movie, Lincoln, and how he was maneuvering and working to get the 13th Amendment passed, and he called one of my favorite predecessors, Secretary Seward, who had been the governor and senator from New York, ran against Lincoln for president, and he told Seward, “I need your help to get this done.” And Seward called some of his lobbyist friends who knew how to make a deal, and they just kept going at it. I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position. (Speech For National Multi-Housing Council, April 24, 2013)
Essentially, her argument here is that maintaining distinct public and private positions is a necessary part of political wheeling-and-dealing and is the only way to get results.
Now, here is Hillary Clinton’s response from the debate:
Hillary Clinton: Right. As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln. It was a master class watching President Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th Amendment; it was principled and it was strategic. And I was making the point that it is hard, sometimes, to get the Congress to do what you want to do and you have to keep working at it. And yes, [when] President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments. [When] convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great, I thought, a great display of presidential leadership…
So, in summary, Hillary’s answer to the question presented, namely “Is it okay for a politician to be two-faced?”, is essentially “Yes, and being two-faced is actually a great display of presidential leadership!”
Here is Donald Trump’s rebuttal:
Donald Trump: I think I should respond, because — so ridiculous. Look, now she is blaming — she got caught in a total lie. Her papers went out to all her friends at the banks, Goldman Sachs and everybody else. And she said things — WikiLeaks — that just came out. And she lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late great Abraham Lincoln. That’s one that I haven’t — okay, Honest Abe. Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That’s a big, big difference. We’re talking about some difference.
Now this is a hilarious, albeit slightly inaccurate, put-down of Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump’s part. Obviously, Hillary Clinton was not “blaming” Abraham Lincoln for her deceptions. Rather, what she was doing is actually much worse: she was using the example of Abraham Lincoln to justify her penchant for duplicity. Donald Trump’s rebuttal played so well because he highlighted the absurdity of comparing Honest Abe’s character and behavior with that of Hillary Clinton’s.
But, I want to get into the merits of Hillary Clinton’s argument itself regarding the necessity of having private positions distinct from one’s public positions. Some have actually attempted to make the case for the virtue of a “two-faced” Hillary Clinton.
In case you have not seen Lincoln, the film focuses on the historical events surrounding the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery. President Lincoln faced great challenges in uniting the disparate factions of Congress into supporting that historic legislation towards the end of the Civil War and he used various means at his disposal to garner support. For example, President Lincoln deployed Secretary of State William Seward to woo lame-duck Democrats into supporting the bill by offering them bureaucratic jobs and personal favors. As Hillary Clinton put it, “[when] President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments. [When] convincing other people, he used other arguments.”
The problem with this argument is that there is a big, big difference between utilizing different arguments for different audiences to advocate for a single position, and having a public position that contradicts a private position.
Let’s take a non-political example: trying to convince different friends to watch a movie with you. First, you may try to persuade Taylor, who takes critical movie reviews very seriously, by emphasizing that this movie is highly rated on movie-review websites. Then, you might try to persuade Alex, who absolutely loves the work of a certain actor, by emphasizing that this actor is in this movie. These arguments are distinct and play to different audiences, but they are not contradictory and both support the same position.
When Abraham Lincoln used different tactics to convince different people to support his position, namely that Congress should pass the Thirteenth Amendment, he was not at the same time holding the contradictory position that Congress should not pass the Thirteenth Amendment.
Hillary Clinton on the other hand seeks to justify holding contradictory positions, like publicly championing the need for tough regulations on Wall Street while privately saying that “there’s nothing magic about regulations.” On the one hand, she privately supports balanced financial reform that, in many ways, “really has to come from the industry itself”, then, on the other hand, she publicly supports a policy to crackdown on Wall Street, going further than Obama’s 2010 Wall Street reform (Dodd-Frank) and apparently advocating for “one of the most progressive financial regulatory plans in presidential history.” Hillary Clinton goes well beyond Abraham Lincoln’s example of utilizing different arguments for different audiences; Hillary Clinton uses different policies for different audiences.
This is why Hillary Clinton refused to release transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street even while Bernie Sanders pounded her politically for such secrecy: when her private position leaks into the public sphere, the illusion is revealed. But her duplicity is not limited to the issue of Wall Street. To give just two more examples, look at the difference between Hillary Clinton’s private and public comments on border security (open borders here; increased border security here) and her private and public comments on the attack in Benghazi. This is a clear pattern.
By the way, Donald Trump has repeatedly engaged in this kind of duplicity as well, including earlier this year when he refused to allow release of an off-the-record tape of his comments to the New York Times editorial board in which Donald Trump allegedly told them that his public comments pertaining to enforcing the law on illegal immigration are nothing more than strategic positioning for future negotiation.
There is certainly value in tailoring one’s arguments in such a way as to best persuade one’s audience. Indeed, it would be silly to ignore the beliefs and goals of one’s audience when attempting to persuade. But nuanced persuasion should be utilized in furtherance of a unified policy position. Having contradictory public and private positions is not virtuous and simply serves to mislead people into voting for the position they hear, which may not be the position one actually advocates behind the scenes.
I don’t think the “virtue” of being two-faced is what people ascribe to Abraham Lincoln when they call him Honest Abe.
