By Choi Yearn-hong
The ongoing formation of Barack Obama's cabinet is interesting to many American people. He is considering Sen. Hillary Clinton from New York, his archrival in the Democratic primary race, as secretary of state.
He has solicited Sen. John McCain's cooperation, and let Sen. Joe Lieberman from Connecticut keep his chair in the U.S. senate committee on homeland security.
McCain was his Republican opponent in the November presidential election and Lieberman was once the Democratic Party's vice presidential candidate, but an ardent supporter and tireless campaigner for McCain.
McCain promised to cooperate with Obama for solving the nation's problems. They had a very good first meeting after the November election.
It is enlightening to watch, because Obama embraces his ``enemies" for the unity of the nation in overcoming a financial crisis internally and unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has emphasized one nation beyond the partisan politics, racial politics and regional politics.
There is a similarity between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. Both disregarded partisan politics after elected to the office of the president.
After winning the presidency, Lincoln disregarded personal animosity and took the unprecedented move of tapping Sen. William Seward from New York to be his secretary of state.
He appointed two other political adversaries as well: Salmon Chase, a handsome widower and Ohio governor, who resented losing to a man he considered inferior, as secretary of the treasury; and Edwin Stanton, a long-bearded Democratic lawyer contemptuous of Lincoln, whom Lincoln inherited as his attorney general but later appointed as secretary of war.
Lincoln chose another foe, Missouri's distinguished elder statesman Edward Bates, to succeed Stanton as attorney general. Bates considered Lincoln incompetent but eventually concluded that the president was ``very near being a perfect man," historian Doris Goodwin writes in her 2005 book ``The Team of Rivals."
As the United States splintered toward civil war, the 16th president assembled the most unusual administration in American history, bringing together his disgruntled opponents and displaying what Goodwin calls a profound self-awareness and political genius.
Lincoln was a source of inspiration for Obama, who will be inaugurated Jan. 20. On a chilly morning 21 months ago, Obama launched his long-shot bid for the presidency from the steps of the old state capital in Springfield, Ill., the same place where a century and a half earlier, Lincoln delivered his historic ``House Divided" speech.
And now, Obama is contemplating Lincoln's particular model of presidential leadership as he moves toward assembling his own team of the White House and cabinet members.
I want to present the Lincoln-Obama story to Korean politicians. They really need a lesson from this story, because they are basically ``partisan animals," or ``factional animals."
The ruling and the opposition parties do not know how to find national interest beyond partisan politics. Even in the same ruling party, factional strife is prevailing, killing each other. They have not made any visible progress toward cooperative politics within the party and between the parties since 1948 when the Korean government was inaugurated.
President Lee Myung-bak cannot get along with Park Geun-hye, his archrival in the Grand National Party. I can hear their bickering in Washington. What can the nation expect between the ruling party and opposition parties?
Nothing! The opposition party members were supporting the so-called very long candlelight demonstrations that plotted the overthrow of the Lee Myung-bak government just elected in early 2008. They seem to be a party close to North Korea's Communist Party controlled by Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-il threatened President Lee with plans to close the Gaeseong Industrial Complex. Kim already closed the Mt. Geumgang tourist resort after the killing of one innocent South Korean woman who was enjoying a morning stroll along a beach.
There is silence from the opposition parties caught in between Lee and Kim. Some opposition party members attacked Lee, while siding with Kim.
Once elected to the presidency, he or she does not need partisan politics or factional politics. This is an axiomatic truth. Lincoln knew it. And now, Obama knows it. I don't know whether President Lee knows it.
Or Lee tried, but failed. So he does not expect any cooperation from the opposition parties. Then, politics is ice-cold long before the winter season comes.
I would like to quote one last paragraph from Lincoln's first presidential inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1861, before the breakout of the Civil War.
``We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surly they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
I would also like to present the last paragraph of Lincoln's second presidential inaugural address delivered on March 4, 1865, to the readers of this column. I hope you can see his poetic sense in the presidential address after the bloody Civil War.
``With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Politics can be a poetic flight. Lincoln saw it. Obama is seeing it. I hope all Korean politicians who admire Lincoln see it.
The global financial crisis South Korea is now facing requires one orchestrated effort from the political leaders from the ruling party and the opposition parties. Crisis needs no malice, no animosity.
Governance of crisis requires wisdom, courage, and teamwork from all political leaders, including labor and business leaders. This is a damn serious business.
Dr. Choi is a political scientist retired from a long teaching career in the United States and Korea.
