My Last Pitch for McCain

I can't quite stir into full blown optimism, but I ain't goin' down without a fight. William Kristol brings us a superb quote from the first Republican Optimist (apologies to John Fremont):

On December 26, 1839, responding to the confident prediction of one of his political opponents "that every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential election" and that Lincoln's opposition to the Van Buren forces was therefore bound to be in vain, Lincoln responded:

Address that argument to cowards and to knaves; with the free and the brave it will effect nothing. It may be true; if it must, let it. .  .  . The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. .  .  . Let none falter, who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all, we shall fail, be it so.

As it happens, the Whig ticket Lincoln supported won that 1840 election. So might, against the odds, the party of Lincoln win this year.

UPDATE: I guess the punchline is that President Harrison died 41 days after inauguration, and was succeeded by President Tyler who held extremely different views. Most notably, Tyler was pretty much Jacksonian in his opposition to the National Bank. Poor Nicholas Biddle waited three terms to get rid on Jackson and Van Buren. Then, when "old Tippecanoe" was elected, he was not in office long enough to change policy.

2008 Posted by John Kranz at November 2, 2008 1:22 PM