Bush Harks Back to Lincoln’s Example

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — President Bush dedicated a presidential museum Tuesday in Abraham Lincoln’s adopted hometown, and said that Lincoln’s ideals were a source of inspiration for policies his own administration was pursuing.

Opening the $90-million Lincoln museum, Bush sought to draw a connection between Lincoln’s efforts to expand the concept of liberty by abolishing slavery and America’s current initiatives to promote democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries with authoritarian pasts.

“American interests and values are both served by standing for liberty in every part of the world,” Bush said. “Our interests are served when former enemies become democratic partners.... Our deepest values are also served when we take part in freedom’s advance, when the chains of millions are broken and the captives are set free.”

Bush, who has called Lincoln his favorite president, said the opening of the museum in downtown Springfield was a reminder that Lincoln had helped the nation confront its unresolved conflict between the Founding Fathers’ promise of liberty and the continuing acceptance of slavery during Lincoln’s time.

“None of us can claim his legacy as our own, but all of us can learn from the faith that guided him,” Bush said.

“Whenever freedom is challenged, the proper response is to go forward with confidence in freedom’s power,” he said.

Bush’s comparison of Lincoln’s ideals to his own beliefs reflects the enormous popularity of the self-taught lawyer who guided the nation through the Civil War before being felled by assassin John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Although Lincoln did not move to Illinois until the age of 21, he practiced law and honed his politics in Springfield before running for president in 1860.

Bush chose to participate in the museum dedication Tuesday rather than attend ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Vice President Dick Cheney represented the administration at that event.

Bush, the nation’s 43rd president, said he felt a special affinity for Lincoln, the 16th.

“In a small way, I can relate to the Rail-Splitter from out West, because he had a way of speaking that was not always appreciated by newspapers back East,” Bush told a crowd that included dozens of Lincoln impersonators sporting stovepipe hats.

Bush was introduced by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who has advanced many of Bush’s initiatives in the Republican-controlled Congress. He shared the stage with prominent Democrats who also praised Lincoln’s legacy, including Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the state’s two U.S. senators, Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama.

Obama, the only African American in the 100-member Senate, said Lincoln “was not a perfect man nor a perfect president.” By contemporary standards, his condemnation of slavery seemed tentative, Obama said, and he sometimes yielded to political pressures.

“Yet despite these imperfections, despite his fallibility, indeed perhaps because of that painful self-awareness of his failings ... when it came time to confront the greatest moral challenge this nation has ever faced, Lincoln did not flinch,” Obama said.

Before the dedication ceremony, the president and First Lady Laura Bush were given a 20-minute tour of the museum, which combines theme-park-style special effects and interactive displays with more traditional artifacts and biographical material.

The 50,000-square-foot museum traces Lincoln’s life from the rural cabin where he read by candlelight as a boy to the state Capitol rotunda where his body lay in state after his assassination.

The museum includes 12 theatrical sets, two multimedia shows, a mock TV newscast of the 1860 election, life-sized silicone reproductions of Lincoln and his contemporaries, along with holograms, strobe lights and animated graphics.

Designed by BRC Imagination Arts of Burbank, the museum has been derided by some observers as “Abe World” and “Six Flags over Lincoln,” but praised by others for seeking to blend scholarship and showmanship in one setting.

The facility is part of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum complex funded mainly by the state of Illinois. A $25-million library adjacent to the museum opened last year.

Bush noted that the museum was located a few blocks away from the old train station where Lincoln delivered a prophetic farewell address after being elected president in 1860.

“I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington,” Lincoln said.

He never returned to Illinois during his lifetime.