If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend you read Doris Goodwin’s Lincoln book, Team of Rivals. Granted, it’s not exactly for casual reading at almost 800 pages long. And does the world need another Lincoln biography?

Actually on that last point, it is more a collective biography of Lincoln and the other 3 major political personalities of that age that Lincoln chose to be in his Cabinet: Senator William Seward, Governor Salmon Chase, and elder statesman Edward Bates.

Goodwin:

Taken together, the lives of these four men give us a picture of the path taken by ambitious young men in the North who came of age in the early decades of the nineteenth century. All four studied law, became distinguished orators, entered politics, and opposed the spread of slavery. Their upward climb was one followed by many thousands who left the small towns of their birth to seek opportunity and the adventure in the rapidly growing cities of a dynamic, expanding America.

Just as a hologram is created through the interference of light from separate sources, so the lives and impressions of those who companioned Lincoln give us a clearer and more dimensional picture of the president himself. Lincoln’s barren childhood, his lack of schooling, his realtionships with male friends, his complicated marriage, the nature of his ambition, and his ruminations about death can be anlyzed more clearly when he is placed side by side with his three contemporaries.

I was especially struck by one passage she includes, relating what Leo Tolstoy had written about Lincoln:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.”

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock…His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.”

“I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.”

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.”

Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

I know there are some who revile Lincoln’s memory even today (a startling number of them living in the North), suggesting that he ruled with an iron fist, disregarding the Constitutional protections of habeus corpus and instituting an income tax and paper money. Others would compare any number of current Presidents favorably with the sixteenth President. I’d say those are, at best, incomplete observations and, at worst, ignorant.

Lincoln was a warrior, he was poet, he was a politician, “he was a hero, he spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock,” and he was, as Tolstoy suggests, “bigger than all the Presidents together.”

As Goodwin puts it, “Lincoln has unequaled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion.“

Here’s the thing: I will freely admit that I have been known to write a letter or phrase on my left-hand index finger if I absolutely have to remember to do something (”T” for tartar sauce). So who am I to mock her?

Besides, it makes no difference in the end. Democrats won’t be surprised and Republicans won’t care.

But still…didn’t we just go through eight years of a President who had the intellectual capacity of a Wal-Mart calculator? How’d that work out, America? Do we really want to do that again?

Uncut Stewart, on Neil Cavuto’s practice of raising “Is Obama a Stalinist?”-style questions:

I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it’s the same thing: “I’m not saying your mother’s a whore. I’m just saying she has sex for money. With people.” [F]ox News used to be all about, you don’t criticize a president during wartime. It’s unacceptable, it’s treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, “Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country.”

It’s 45 minutes or so, but watch the whole thing. It’s worth it.

Facebook has just started rolling out a new homepage design to a small number of users, and will be deploying it on a wide scale in the near future. The design takes the navigational elements that have previously been tucked under the “Applications” menu and returns them to the left sidebar of the page (which is actually where they were a long time ago).

The design also includes some UI enhancements, like the ability to send messages direct from your homepage using a pop-over window, rather than having to visit a separate page. There’s also a new emphasis on search — note how much larger the search box is, and its more centered placement on the page.

It also looks like the News Feed filters and friends lists have been removed (or at least no longer take up the entire left side bar). And the naming of the two different homepage streams — Live Feed and News Feed — have changed: they’re both part of the News Feed now, with the live updates under a “Most Recent” tab and the highlights under “Top News”.

Immediate impression? I had just finished adding a number of my Baton Rouge FB friends into a separate list and now I canNOT find that list anymore. I know it’s there somewhere…

Gah.

increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed–slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have “trust and confidence” in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

Lessig is at the forefront of a movement that wants to amend the Constitution to make it difficult for corporations to donate to political campaigns but that’s just the tip of his iceberg. Find out more at Change Congress.

Artist Mar Dore stumbled on a box of slides in her family’s home in Texas a few years back, and inside, discovered photographs that her father, John Mizenko, took of the parades back in the era of “Mad Men.” That box of slides was like a time capsule, Mar says, and opened a door into history—the history of New Orleans, and of her own family.

I do love a parade and there is nothing like a Mardi Gras parade.  Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!

There’s more to it. Read the whole thing.

P.S. 55% aren’t sure whether or not Acorn stole the ‘08 election. 33% are unsure whether or not Obama “wants the terrorists to win.” Gah!

The science-fiction sensation “Avatar” and the war-on-terror thriller “The Hurt Locker” lead the Academy Awards with nine nominations each, including best picture and director for James Cameron and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow.

For the first time since 1943 the Oscars feature 10 best-picture contenders instead of the usual five.

I understand they expanded the field to make sure the less popular films also had a shot at Best Picture glory, although The Hurt Locker probably would have made it regardless.

Side note: The Hurt Locker probably set the record for lowest grossing film ever to score a Best Picture nomination. I’d love to see it win just so that Cameron gets spanked — by his ex-wife.