PBS News Hour - Full Show - How Lincoln would navigate today's politics

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

"What would Lincoln do?" Author and historian Matthew Pinsker's substack uses this question as a framework to explore modern politics. He talks with Geoff Bennett about his latest book, "Boss Lincoln," which examines how Lincoln still shapes our country today. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Hey everybody, it's Jeff Bennett, and this is the PBS News podcast, Settle In. In observance of President's Day, we're asking a simple question. What would Abraham Lincoln do if he were still alive today? Author and historian Matthew Pinsker tackles this question every week online. We sat down to understand how Lincoln kept the nation from being torn apart and the takeaways for this moment of political division. And while Lincoln is now widely considered to be one of our best presidents, is it fair to ask would he still be successful today?

So settle in and find out. Hope you enjoy our conversation with Matthew Pinsker. Matthew Pinsker, thanks for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. You've spent decades immersed in Abraham Lincoln, countless lectures, three books, now this weekly substack. Why does Lincoln still feel like unfinished business to you as a historian? It's amazing.

I think people don't realize, but we find new evidence almost every year. There's always some document stashed away. somebody's attic. It just brings him to life in a fresh way. And why do you think he's worthy of close study? Well, of course, he's the apostle of democracy. He's our greatest president. I'll fight anybody who says otherwise. And, you know, he's so relevant. Unfortunately, he seems too relevant right now, but he is always relevant and worth studying and drawing inspiration from. In many ways, he's sort of frozen in marble as the great emancipator. What do we miss about him and we focus only on that legacy and not how he actually operated as a day-to-day politician?

There's nothing wrong with appreciating Lincoln's nobility, his greatness. The moniker great emancipator is worthy of his legacy. His writing is prose poetry. But that's not the only reason why he was successful. And if we over romanticize, if we admire him too much, then you just can't understand how politics works. And if you see what he did behind the scenes, then I think it makes politics seem more possible. Well, say more about that because this book, Boss Lincoln, it reframes Abraham Lincoln as a political operator, somebody who was really comfortable, deeply comfortable with party politics.

Why was he so effective as a party boss? the first rule of running a party is you have to put the party ahead of yourself. So we live in an age where we think of politicians only as candidates. They lived in an age where they thought of parties as just organizations. He was able to see, you know, multi-dimensions in all sides of the picture, but he built coalitions that served larger purposes and then found his ambition within those organizations, those movements. Where did that instinct come from? I mean, that's so hard.

I'm not a psychologist. But here's a man who, when he was 23 years old, he was basically unemployed or half-employed, living on his own in a small village in central Illinois with only about a year of formal schooling. He decided that he was a qualified candidate for the state legislature, and he ran. He lost, but that kind of ambition, that's hard to describe, and yet it was essential to his success. What did he learn early on as a young Whig politician at the time? Well, I think what he learned as a Whig more than anything else was the importance of playing by the rules and playing to the rules. You know, many of the Whigs that were part of his party movement, they were anti-party.

They couldn't bring themselves to embrace the rough side of politics. And they lost, in Illinois, they lost almost all the time. And he was always urging them to organize, to work, to canvas. I mean, the first time he used that biblical phrase, a house divided against itself, cannot stand. That was urging fellow wigs to support conventions as a necessary reform to help them beat the Democrats. Yeah, these days we think of partisanship as almost a moral failing, but Lincoln really leaned into it. He saw the political utility of partisanship. then and now people think partisanship is an insult.

It's like a shorthand for being petty or vindictive. It can be like that, and Lincoln had his moments, but it has another side. It's about coalition building. It's about bringing people together for a common purpose. And that's where it performs its essential function in our democracy. And on the matter of slavery, Lincoln understood slavery not just as a moral evil. I picked this up from your book, but as a political wedge issue, I mean, how did he see it through a political lens?

That's a good question. It is complicated and it changes over time. So in the years before the Civil War, I don't think Lincoln would concede that he saw it as a wedge issue. He wasn't trying to use slavery, but he recognized like almost everybody did in the 1840s and especially in the 1850s that slavery was ripping their country apart and the parties had to address it. Before that, slavery existed and the country was becoming

sectional, but the parties tried to contain it or even ignore it. Starting in the 1850s, they recognized that they had to address it. And the question was how. And it was tough for some of them. If you organize a party that declares slavery to be wrong, then half the country, or at least a section of the country, won't support you at all. And that's what the Republicans had to do, And that's what Lincoln did as he led the Republicans. And that strategic mindset ultimately pushed the country toward emancipation? Absolutely. So the abolitionists, the radicals, who said slavery is wrong, we have to abolish it immediately.

They never could have achieved it. They needed moderates like Lincoln who said, slavery is wrong, but we can work in a strategic way to contain it and then to turn the tide of public sentiment against it and then to abolish it gradually. Now, that didn't happen. Of course, just the election of an anti-slavery party created the secession crisis and then the war. And then that's the context that accelerated the timeline toward emancipation and abolition. Another thing that really helped the public understand who Lincoln was were the Lincoln Douglas debates. Not just politically, but those were some of the first true media events of the day that introduced Lincoln to a national audience.

Lincoln was nominated by the Republicans to be the Senate candidate, but that was unprecedented because back then people didn't vote for U.S. Senate candidates. It was the legislatures who did that. And the reason why the Republicans nominated him was because Stephen Douglas, the Democratic incumbent, he was engaged in this feud with James Buchanan, the president of the United States, also a Democrat. And because of that feud, there was an opportunity for Douglas to switch parties. And this is where I think one of Lincoln's greatest decisions, one of his greatest accomplishments, was to draw a line and say nobody can become a Republican unless they're willing to declare slavery wrong.

And Douglas refused to do that. He said, let people decide for themselves, whether it's right or wrong. And that was the reason why Republicans in Illinois rallied around Lincoln, nominated him for Senate, why they had that campaign with the debates to try to influence the votes for state house and state Senate. And frankly, that's the reason why Lincoln became the Republican nominee for president in 1860. It was a byproduct of his leadership as what I'm calling in the book an ultra-Republican, not an anti-slavery radical, but somebody who understood at that critical moment that the party had to purify its message. Let's talk a bit more about Lincoln the man, because he had this folksy, plain-spoken image. Is that how he was seen and understood at the time? And behind that persona, he was also meticulous and calculating.

Right. He's a complicated man. He had multiple dimensions. He was friendly. He was a great storyteller. He could tell jokes. But on the other hand, people recognized he was also kind of distant. I call him Boss Lincoln for a reason.

He was kind of a loner as a decision maker. Not that he didn't have confidants and allies, but he rarely confided. his innermost thoughts and strategies to any of the people around him. And like you said, in his private notes, in the secret notes that he sent his supporters, those are kind of the base texts of this book. He was tough, focused. He could bark out orders. He could be really demanding. And it was part of the commanding nature of his leadership. If he were watching politics today, what do you think would surprise him most about our political parties and what do you think wouldn't surprise him at all? I don't know if he would be surprised, but I think he would be

depressed that people seem to be losing faith in democracy. After 250 years, after just, after recovering from the trauma of the Civil War, I think he would expect people to have more faith in their creed. That's part of the reason why I think in my substack, I find, on what would Lincoln do? In my classroom, in my public speeches in the book, in everything I'm doing, I'm trying to remind people the reason why Lincoln called this the last best hope of earth. I mean, democracy is not the Greek word for perfect, okay, but it might as well be the Greek word for disagreement, and people should not be demoralized by disagreements, even ones that have high stakes, even ones that feel angry. People in America have always been angry, and that

doesn't have to mean the end of the Republic. And if everyone would just kind of remember that, we would all be in a better place. That's good advice. That's straight from Lincoln. Yeah. Well, that was my next question. I was going to ask this idea of what would Lincoln do. What's the framework you use to determine what, in fact, he would do? Well, when he became president, of course, seven states seceded from the Union in opposition in protest against his election as an anti-slavery president. So these are seven states in the Deep South that have slavery, and they put slavery above country. But there are 15 slave states in the Union in 1861.

And Lincoln uses his inaugural to speak to the eight that are still within the Union. The majority of slave states are still there. And he tells them essentially, he says, secession is the essence of anarchy. And then in the next sentence, he basically defines union. He says a majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations. is the only true sovereign of a free people. Anything else, you fly to anarchy or despotism. And so what he's telling people is that the union, that he's trying to save,

it's not the compact of states like the Confederates are saying. And it's not just a platitude for we the people. It's the union between the winners and losers in the election. And he's trying to reassure those eight slave states that even though he's anti-slavery, he will respect the constitutional limitations that protect their rights as slaveholders. And it wasn't enough to win over those eight states, but it split them. Four stayed within the union and four joined the Confederacy.

If he had lost all eight, the Confederacy would have won that war. And so it was a great accomplishment, even though it wasn't enough to prevent bloodshed. Yeah. As you said, your substack invites these historical consequences. comparisons, what would Lincoln do? How would he look upon January 6th as an insurrection, a political failure, or something else? I mean, there's no doubt that he would have looked on as an insurrection because he dealt with it in his own time. They didn't have the count for the electoral vote on January 6th. Their count was on February 13th. The inaugural was in March.

And Lincoln wrote letters to subordinates warning them that it was a dangerous moment, that the forces for secession might try to disrupt the count. And he was planning for it. He also worried about the possibility of disruption during the inaugural. He understood how grave those kind of disruptions could be. He took nothing for granted. But when I show my students the picture of the man from Delaware who was carrying the Confederate flag through the Capitol on January 6th,

I asked them what they think Lincoln would see, what they see. And, you know, I get a variety of answers. But I end that discussion by saying what Lincoln would see is Americans. Even though he thought they would be misguided, even though he clearly would have thought January 6 was an insurrection or an attempted insurrection, he would still think of them with malice toward none and try to find a way to reconnect, to persuade, to rebind that. that union that was shattered on January 6th. And I know people have tried, and yet we still need to keep trying, because that bond is still afraid.

The symbolic weight of that man with a Confederate flag in the Capitol, given that that was the very thing that Lincoln fought against, he tried to guard against, you think he would see that man as an American? I do. Absolutely. Look, he was the one who offered amnesty to the Confederates. Now, the difference between his amnesty and Trump's pardon of the January 6 rioters is that Lincoln made a conditional. This is boss Lincoln at his best.

They not only had to pledge future loyalty to the Constitution, they also had to pledge loyalty to all the anti-slavery proclamations and statutes that had been adopted during the war. He understood that he had to leverage his offer of forgiveness for their recognition that slavery was dead. And that's how amnesty proceeded during the Civil War. That's why he was able to say with malice toward none. We can provide charity for all if you acknowledge the wrongheadedness of your views. And that's not easy for people. Kevin Seafried was the name of the man who carried that Confederate flag on January 6th. When he was sentenced, he expressed remorse.

He brought with him his son, who was the age of my students on that day. He also expressed remorse. Now that they've been pardoned, I hope that. they still feel that remorse. But I'm not sure they do because the pardon that President Trump offered was just a blanket sweeping pardon. He calls them victims. Now, I don't think Lincoln would see them as victims, but he would still see them as Americans. What would he make of the effort to reimagine, to rebuild, to reconstruct the White House, both literally and metaphorically? Yeah, this is a funny story, because Lincoln dealt with problems with White House renovations as president.

His wife, Mary Lincoln, was charged with kind of renovating the White House, and that was her domain, and she overspent the budget. And he was furious. You know, he complained that he had to pay for the flub-dubs for this damned old house. Now, Trump loves flub-dubs in Lincoln's view. They have much different styles. But I think Lincoln demonstrated over time a respect for the office, a respect for the people's house. that Trump hasn't shown yet with his desire to renovate and to move ahead without enough consultation. There's no doubt that Lincoln wouldn't appreciate the style choices that Trump has made,

but I also think he would object to the process by which one man is trying to change traditions that have been in place for the people for centuries. And Lincoln's decision to dump his Secretary of War, what does that tell us about his sense of leadership and patience during a crisis? Well, I did a post in the substack. What would Lincoln do about Pete Hegsef? You know, the sharks have been circling him for months now. And I compared him to Lincoln's first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron.

Lincoln... We should say it's notable that Hegseff now has that title Secretary of War. Right. But go ahead. Yeah. The circle has completed itself, at least in their minds. I'm not sure that will stick. That's right.

But the point is that being a cabinet officer is a tough job. And Lincoln had a revolving door of cabinet officers and generals, and he fired Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, early in the administration. He complained about him bitterly behind the scenes. There were a whole host of accusations against Cameron. But Lincoln tried to stand by him. And my point in the post was that Lincoln believed in consultation with his rivals, but they were never such a happy team and it was a difficult cabinet. And Lincoln ultimately had to make most of his decisions on his own.

Lincoln also believed in reading your book, I learned this, an incremental change, which earned both praise and criticism. Would that approach still work in today's hyper-accelerated media environment, hyper-partisan environment, do you think? So, look, everybody knows. The world is different. You've got social media. You've got television. You've got all of this instant communication. But people forget that Lincoln entered the age where the media environment.

was changing almost just as fast. He was the first president to really put the telegraph to use. And the telegraph is really the greatest leap in communication speed. It takes communication from the speed of a horse or a boat to the speed of a wire. That's even more of a leap than we've endured in the last couple of decades with the Internet and social media and our phones. So he was living in a rapidly changing, stressful environment. And he survived it. Now, you know, it's still different. They were a newspaper reading public by and large. And I think we don't read enough news. We see it on our phones. Most of my students see it. But that's not the same thing as reading it and thinking about it. And perhaps the pace of our world has made the ability to reflect kind of crippled. And that's hurt politics.

Abraham Lincoln, he often returned to this set of core principles. What was his favorite piece of advice and why does it still matter today? According to his top aide, John Hay, Lincoln's favorite piece of advice was that he always believed in a short statute of limitations in politics, meaning that he was forgiving. Boss Lincoln could be demanding, but he was also forgiving. And it was that combination that made him such an effective leader. He pushed people. but he also gave them multiple chances to try to prove not their loyalty to him, but their loyalty to the mission. And so even though he had a revolving door in his cabinet and a revolving door among his top military figures,

I think by the end of the war he had proven to enough of them that his commitment was to success for the country, not just some sort of personal success. What do you think the Lincoln message would be then for people who believe the system no longer works for them? So Lincoln's argument for the need for faith in democracy is that any other alternative would be anarchy or despotism. So ballots, not bullets, if you can't resolve arguments through faith in elections, where if you lose, you still are determined to try to persuade people and come back and win power later, if you're not going to believe in that, then what are you going to believe in?

Either anarchy, just the violence wins, force wins, or despotism where you turn over leadership to a strongman. Now, there are always some people on the fringes who support that kind of extremism, but the vast majority of Americans then and now want something different. They want a government of the people, by the people for the people.

You said earlier that Abraham Lincoln is the best president to have ever served. I think a lot of people agree with you. Every president since Lincoln, it seems, has measured himself against Lincoln. Why has Lincoln remained the standard as rather than simply one president among many? Part of it is because he wrote down in such beautiful phrases, what our democracy means. You know, the Gettysburg Address, the second inaugural. He has a way of expressing the poetry of democracy like nobody else. And so it stands the test of time.

But part of it, of course, is that he faced the gravest challenge any president has faced. We've always, always had sporadic violence. We've had political friction. People are always unhappy with something. There's injustice. Every year in that 250 years of our republic, there's been some kind of crisis. problem challenge and yet the Civil War was the gravest of all of those challenges. It was the closest we've come to losing the Republic and you know I'm not Lincoln's

defense attorney but I don't think any other person could have saved that Republic the way he did his cabinet advisors were great politicians men like William Seward and Sam and Chase they were they were towering figures in their own right and they gave him bad advice at critical moments. And I think his willingness to ignore their advice and to pursue a different path is what saved the union. Is there a danger in asking the question, what would Lincoln do only to the degree that it can turn him into a historical shortcut or, for some, a political weapon? Right. Historical analogies, they are not ways to predict the future. History is not mad. It's not

like an equation. And I certainly don't want to weaponize Lincoln against anybody. But when you do historical analogies the right way, they can inspire. They give some perspective, they offer some insight, they provide context, but mostly, especially when you study somebody like Lincoln, somebody that most people revere. It finds a way to inspire people toward what he called the better angels of their nature. And you know that's what we need right now. We have to figure out a way to inspire people. And I think asking what would Lincoln do is a shortcut to that kind of necessary inspiration. This book is the labor of love 15 years in the making, is that right?

Something like that. Yeah. A thousand footnotes you were saying earlier. How did you find your way to Abraham Lincoln? Well, in some ways, I mean, the book dates back to the 1990s. I was a student at Harvard and I became enamored with a professor named David Herbert Donald, who was like a mentor to me. And I was in a graduate seminar with him when I was an undergraduate.

The political philosopher John Rawls sat in on it as an auditor. It was just this amazing experience. And then Donald had me work as his research assistant on a biography of Lincoln that he was preparing. Still probably the best one-volume biography of Lincoln that exists. And I felt like I was an apprentice with a master craftsman. And so ever since then, I've been working on Lincoln, you know, many years, multiple books, lots of articles, lots of teaching. And this book is kind of the culmination of that.

In your teaching, can you track a generational difference in the understanding of who Abraham Lincoln was and why he matters now? So in the summers, I teach a program called the Knowledge for Freedom Seminar. It's designed to help low-income or first-generation college students who are still in high school, prepare for the college experience. It's sponsored by a group called the Teagle Foundation. It's like a classic text program. It's all free. And each program across the country, there's two or three dozen of these programs, knowledge for freedom. They organize their curriculum around different classic texts. We organize our program around Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the other

Lincoln Douglas debates, talking about how they argued over the right way, to end slavery in America. Douglas being the more radical figure, Lincoln being the more pragmatic, moderate figure. And over the years, the students have veered in favor of Douglas over Lincoln. And I try to draw them back. But Douglas is so appealing to younger people in particular,

but right now, to anybody who's angry, because he expressed that anger in his complaints about slavery and his call to arms against the slaveholders. Lincoln shared that feeling. He said he hated slavery as much as any abolitionist, but he was disciplined about the message that they were presenting to the national audience because he understood that you needed to build a coalition to create the change that would end slavery. And building coalitions, that's tricky. And you can't always express outrage in order to get it done. It speaks to the way in which our politics these days doesn't reward incrementalism or a moderate approach or doing the hard work. It rewards almost polarities, like the swings from one side to the other. Right. And it's the job of leaders to remind people that change happens in drips and that it's still worth doing.

And that sometimes you need persistence more than resistance. That's a message leaders have to share, have to emphasize. And it's understandable why my students are impatient. I get that. But it's the job of, I think it's the job of professors and community leaders, civic leaders, and politicians to remind people that it's worth the weight if we can make change without violence. What else do you want people who read your book or read your substack to understand,

not just about Abraham Lincoln, but about leadership and moments of national fracture. Well, one of the things that comes across loud and clear in my book about boss Lincoln is that leadership is a tough business. People don't follow. You can lead, but even your friends, your allies, your subordinates, there's always friction. I mean, most of the focal points in my book have nothing to do with the Confederates. They have to do with the people who were on Lincoln's side, who said they supported him. and they're complaining about him and undermining him and frustrating him. And so one of the messages of the book is that to be a great leader,

you have to have a thick skin. You have to be able to put up with an awful lot of friction, and you can't be discouraged. Lincoln's sort of stubborn persistence, as much as anything else, is one of the reasons why he was so successful behind the scenes. Matthew Pinsker, the book is Boss Lincoln, in the partisan life of Abraham Lincoln.

Really enjoyed speaking with you. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. It was a great honor to be here.