Aug. 6, 2007

Looking for the real Abe Lincoln is like looking for Moby Dick, Rosebud, and the silver lining, all at the same time.

Oh, thank goodness. Murdoch has agreed not to meddle with The Wall Street Journal editorial page. I'm trying to think of a more useless exercise. I don't have one, but if I did, it would involve either identical or Siamese twins or possibly turning off the lights on the dark side of the moon.

Why is it that when historians reach out to a general audience they succumb to the temptations of the pedagogue? Take Simon Schama, who has written rich and compelling studies of European history but came across as a tetchy know-all when he narrated his History of Britain for the BBC.

And why do they feel the need to wag the finger so sternly?

Bush partisans will insist that the president was brave to go to war in Iraq because the outcome of his presidency would depend on whether or not America won. But presidential courage — as I define it in the book — is when a president risks his popularity for an important cause for which Americans of the future are grateful. At the moment, it’s sadly hard to imagine that future Americans will feel that way about the Iraq war.

When Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, recently ridiculed a provision on the House floor to spend $100,000 on a prison museum near Fort Leavenworth, Kan., Representative Nancy Boyda of Kansas jumped to promote her district’s heritage.

Leavenworth County, she boasted, had more prisons than any other county in America. Its inmates, she added, have included Machine Gun Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz (before he was sent to Alcatraz).

“The local residents are proud of their heritage, and rightly so,” Ms. Boyda told Mr. Flake during a debate on the House floor. The House voted 317 to 112 to keep her earmark.