President Donald Trump repeatedly says that he’s the greatest president, except maybe for Abraham Lincoln.
This week, the president suggested in a tweet that November’s election be delayed “until people can properly, securely and safely vote.” Well, that’s not very Lincolnesque.
In 1864, some suggested that the nation couldn’t pull off a fall presidential election in the middle of the Civil War. Yet even during that summer when the war wasn’t going well for the North, and many thought Lincoln wouldn’t win reelection, including Lincoln himself, he insisted that the election go forward because the United States is a democracy that should not perish from the earth. And democracies hold elections.
In that spirit, to allow everyone the chance to vote, including soldiers fighting to preserve the Union, states in a short time created the absentee ballot, which worked very well.
Today with the coronavirus spiking, the economy tanking, unemployment rising, and his poll numbers diving, Trump wants to postpone the election, and he questions the viability of mail-in ballots. He’s definitely no Lincoln.
With visionless leadership like Trump’s, it makes one wonder whether this nation, of, by and for the people can long endure.
Elbert Eugene Peck, Salt Lake City
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