We really need to get ourselves better elites, because ours are just plain embarrassing.
How clever! How cutting! How... totally wrong.
Well, technically, he's right. Lincoln never said those precise words. Then again, there are many things Lincoln never said, like, "Don't forget to pick up the Diet Pepsi," or, "Someone needs to make an app that has all the Washington area theater listings."
No, he didn't say those things, either, but I'm guessing, given how very smart and erudite Beschloss believes himself to be, that he was getting at a larger, more important, and ultimately more sophisticated and nuanced point.
Orange Man bad.
More to the point, the big bad Orange Man treats the press in a rude manner.
You know what else is rude?
Throwing editors in jail because you don't like what they're saying about you, shutting down newspapers, and seizing telegraph lines.
Pretty much everyone knows that. I, a very not-presidential historian who has never been called by NBC to comment on presidential matters and have not written even one book about presidents (however I have read a few) knew that.
So, apparently, did everyone else on the Internet.
These are just the first nine responses I got when I pulled up the retweets, and eight of them point out Beschloss's error.
Did I mention that aside from being NBC's Presidential Historian, Beschloss served on the advisory board for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission?
"An advisory board included more than 150 historians, scholars, civic leaders and Lincoln enthusiasts. Among them were Michael Beschloss,..."
Beschloss seems to have a thing for being wrong about all things Lincoln.
Here's another epic fail at snark.
Unlike Beschloss, I did revisit the archives of their 1858 debates, and once again, while technically true (Douglas never called Lincoln a "radical liberal"), he did engage in naked race-baiting.
"All I have to say is this, if you Black Republicans think that the negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in the carriage with the wife while the master of the carriage drives the team, you have a perfect right to so do."
Incidentally, "black Republican" was considered an insult of a high order.
As one contemporary called him,
"...[the] most arrogant demagogue that ever disgraced humanity."
He also said, in those famous debates in which he did not call anyone a radical liberal,
"It does not depend upon the place a negro's parents were born, or whether they were slaves or not, but upon the fact that he is a negro, belonging to a race incapable of self-government, and for that reason ought not to be on an equality with white men."
Way more acceptable, according to NBC Presidential Historian and Harvard Graduate, Michael Beschloss.
While I never received an Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research," I do know how to use Google.
"Political insults and conspiracy theories are nothing new in American history. One election in particular set a standard for nasty charges and countercharges. In the 1858 Illinois senatorial contest, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas hurled insults and half-truths that sound eerily like today's rhetoric."
Just in case you are starting to think our sophisticated elites from whom we should be taking both our political and policy cues aren't all that sophisticated after all, Beschloss steps up his game with this tweet.
Edgy. Brave. Stunning.
He has a few Stooges motifs. I don't want to ponder that too much more as I've grown measurably stupider reading his tweets.
NBC Presidential Historian. Philips Academy (Andover). Harvard. Award-winning author and historian.
And complete clown.
