Abraham Lincoln's Looks and Mental Illness Would Keep Him Out of the White House Today

It has been fifty years since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy held the first ever televised presidential debate, changing American politics forever. Nixon, losing the first debate due to his haggard appearance from illness, refusal to put on make up and his five o'clock shadow caused astute political observers to realize that substance no longer was the most important political asset. A politician's image was now more important than what he or she thought, said or did.

As Marshall McLuhan would say a few years later, "With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is 'sent'," and "At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images."

McLuhan's reflections on the media, particularly television, give us something to think about on Abraham Lincoln's 201st birthday.

There is no doubt in my mind that if Abraham Lincoln appeared on the political scene today as a candidate for any major political office, divorced from both the realities and myths that now surround him, he might get elected dog catcher, but that's about it.

Cosmetic surgeons could remove the wart on his face and pin his ears back a little, but it still wouldn't help. Stylists could tame his thick wiry hair, but it still wouldn't help. A barber could shave off his beard and Professor Henry Higgins could teach him to say care instead of keer, but the fact remains that Lincoln's inherent homeliness and somewhat high pitched voice would send him straight to the political graveyard.

But what would destroy Lincoln's electability today, more so than his lack of telegenicity would be his past, his youth. A candidate can like George W. Bush, survive a DUI, or like Bill Clinton, a taste of Marijuana, but he or she cannot survive a past history of mental illness.

Abraham Lincoln had two major episodes of depression as a young man. And as a mature man, even while he was president, he continued to suffer from periods of what was, in those days, more commonly called melancholy.

Lincoln's first bout with depression came after the death of a friend, some think lover, Ann Rutledge. According to Joshua Wolf Shenk's powerful book, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, a farmer who knew Lincoln said that Lincoln, following the death of Rutledge "...would take his gun and wander off in the woods by him self, away from the association of even those he most esteemed, this gloom seemed to deepen for some time, so as to give anxiety to his friends in regard to his Mind."

Lincoln told a school teacher, Mentor Graham, "that he felt like Committing Suicide often." Lincoln told another politician that he didn't dare carry a pocket knife because he was afraid of what he might do with it. For years Lincoln scholars knew that Lincoln had written a poem about suicide, but it wasn't until 2002 that Richard Lawrence Miller, an independent Lincoln scholar, discovered an anonymous poem called The Suicide's Soliloquy in the August 25, 1838 edition of the Sangamo Journal. While there are some dissenting scholars, most Lincoln historians and biographers now accept Lincoln's authorship of the poem, which reads in part:

"Sweet steel! Come forth from out your sheath,
And glist'ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers."

What the bloggers and radio talk show hosts would do today if they found a political candidate had written a poem like that when he was 29 years old! Lincoln's severe depression, though widely known, was never used against him. Part of the reason why is found in Shenk's interview on NPR's All Things Considered in 2005, when he said that people were allowed more space in the 1800s to express their emotions than they are today. Indeed, it seems that depressed people faced less stigma then than they do now, and as Shenk also went on to say in the interview, we live in an age where people expect only optimism and certainty from their political leaders.

Shenk's thesis, however, is not just that Lincoln suffered from severe depression, but that the depression contributed to his greatness. Shenk does not glorify depression or suicide. But depression and Lincoln's resulting brooding over why he should not kill himself and why life was worth living lead to insights that enabled him to become a great leader. The struggle against suicide and depression built character in Lincoln. The habit of brooding or thinking deep and long about his own problems was the method Lincoln used to formulate solutions for the nation's problems.

The elimination of intelligent, deep, but melancholy individuals like Abraham Lincoln from America's political scene has injured America's public life. In fact, I will stick my nose out and say that our current economic crisis is not a monetary crisis, but a crisis of leadership.

Until we change our criteria for political candidacy, moving away from style and towards substance, we will continue to populate both Washington D. C. and Albany with stuffed shirts and empty suits that promise the moon, but only deliver moldy bits of green cheese.