Literary Corner: The World Will Little Note

US Embassy in Arnona. Photo by Reuters, via Jerusalem Post.

Too Flowery. And He Died.

by Donald J. Trump

Do I get credit for saving a million,
billion bucks? Not really. Someday.
You know when Abraham Lincoln made that
Gettysburg Address speech, the great speech,
you know he was ridiculed? He was ridiculed.

He took the horse and carriage up
from the White House and wrote it
partially in that carriage and partially
at a desk in the Lincoln bedroom which is
incredible by the way in the White House,
and he went up to Gettysburg and delivered that speech.

And he was excoriated by the fake news.
They had fake news then. He was excoriated.
They said it was a terrible, terrible speech.
They said it was far too short. It’s not long,
many of us know it by memory. It was far too short
and it was far too flowery. Four score and seven
years ago, right? Too flowery. And he died.

Fifty years after his death they said
it may have been the greatest speech
ever made in America.

(Text via Grabien. H/t Jordan for title.)



The million-billion bucks line refers to the transfer of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to a suburban consulate in Arnona, Jerusalem, that looks like a gas station. As he told the press in March, in an appearance with Prime Minister Netanyahu,

"They put an order in front of my desk last week for $1 billion. I said, 'A billion? What's that for? We're going to build an embassy.' I said, 'We're not going to spend $1 billion.' We're actually doing it for about $250,000. So check that out," he said.

So CNN, and a number of other outlets in the US and Israel, checked it out: the $400,000, not $250,000, that the State Department spent to open the embassy in May was only the first part of the needed renovations. In July a $21.2 million contract was signed with the firm Desbuild Limak of Maryland to provide a security upgrade. In August, the municipal authorities approved an expansion of the property by 7,500 square feet, no word on how much that's going to cost, and the entire thing is temporary—the new presumptively billion-dollar building is still going to be built. Also there's no place in Jerusalem for Ambassador David Friedman to live, safety considerations I suppose as well as social ones, since all the other international diplomatic community is in Tel Aviv, so Friedman has to commute every day.

They have succeeded in driving the Palestinian community out of peace negotiations, making the job a lot easier for chief negotiator Jared Kushner—now all he has to do is get Israel to make peace with itself. But far from saving a "million-billion bucks", Trump's gesture has cost us well over $20 million. Still, there's something pretty audacious in that implied comparison between his success in the art of the deal (the imaginary billion-dollar saving, which I'm sure he thinks of as having outwitted the Jews) and Lincoln's success in the art of rhetoric.

George Conway, the press secretary's husband, has made fun of Trump for saying that the press excoriated the Gettysburg Address at the time of its delivery:

Not so, according to Conway. "The coverage of President Lincoln’s address in the New York Times was quite favorable, actually," he tweeted, linking two archived Times articles from 1863. One described Lincoln delivering his speech in "a very deliberate manner, with strong emphasis, and with a most business-like air." The other confirmed "three cheers" were apparently given after Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg.

That's not completely fair to the emperor. To begin with, praising Lincoln for having a "most business-like air" (though it's not something you could ever say about a Trump speech) is hardly effusive, compared to what The Times said about Edward Everett's two-hour speech, and the only comment they offered on the content of Lincoln's address was kind of snarky, agreeing with the president that the world would little note nor long remember either speech:

The Dedication ceremonies were apparently a minor consideration, for even while Mr. EVERETT was delivering his splendid oration, there were as many people wandering about the fields, made memorable by the fierce struggles of July, as stood around the stand listening to his eloquent periods. They seem to have considered, with President LINCOLN, that it was not what was said here, but what was done here, that deserved their attention.

And then The Times was a Republican paper. They didn't go in for "fake news", but genuinely partisan editorial comment, and so did the Democratic press. The latter (the Northern party, which mostly favored the war, but was ready to start on reconciliation before the war was over, as Lincoln decidedly wasn't, contrary to what David Brooks always tells us) was pretty hostile, according to Doug Stewart writing for Smithsonian seven score and ten years and several months later, in November 2013. Stewart's own great-great grandfather, Oramel Barrett, was editor of the Harrisburg Daily Patriot and Union:

“We pass over the silly remarks of the President,” he wrote in his newspaper. “For the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of.”

And

Here’s the Chicago Times, a leading Democratic paper: “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly flat dishwatery utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.”

It wasn’t just the Democrats. Here’s the Times of London: “The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln.”

I don't know whether Stephen Miller or whoever wrote the text he was working from and gave him the factoid about the reception of the Address told him anything about its content, but Trump is clearly improvising on what the literary criticism was, talking about the things he disapproves of himself (as well as taking an opportunity to display his knowledge of the first six words). The shortness of the Address wasn't a big issue (and Trump is not being overly honest when he hints that he knows it by heart); and it's certainly wrong to suggest that its language was condemned as too "flowery". The thing that annoyed Democrats about the "fourscore and seven years ago" was that everybody understood it very clearly: as dating the foundation of the nation not with the Constitution of 1787 but the Declaration of Independence of 1776, with its assertion, taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that all men are born equal:

His speech was “an insult” to the memories of the dead, the Chicago Times fumed: “In its misstatement of the cause for which they died, it was a perversion of history so flagrant that the most extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.” Worse, invoking the Founding Fathers in his cause was nothing short of libelous. “They were men possessing too much self-respect,” the Times assured its readers, “to declare that negroes were their equals.”

Prefiguring the views of last year's pro-Confederate marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, when, as Trump said, there were "people that were very fine people on both sides."

Moreover it took not fifty years but two to get to the modern view of the quality of the Gettysburg Address, as what Senator Charles Sumner called "a monumental act" in his eulogy for the murdered president, and Sumner insisted that it hadn't really taken any time at all:

"The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."

And it's true (according to a nice collection of documentation by the Cornell University Library) that the Republican Providence Journal wrote

Could the most elaborate and splendid oration be more beautiful, more touching, more inspiring than those thrilling words of the President? They have in our humble judgment the charm and power of the very highest eloquence.

And the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican

Surprisingly fine as Mr. Everett’s oration was in the Gettysburg consecration, the rhetorical honors of the occasion were won by President Lincoln. His little speech is a perfect gem; deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma. Then it has the merit of unexpectedness in its verbal perfection and beauty… Turn back and read it over, it will repay study as a model speech. Strong feelings and a large brain are its parents."

So as Politifact might say, We rate this Half True, or as I might say, Half Witted.