When Lincoln was worried about mending matters, corporate cartels were barely present. Rockefeller was capturing as much of the oil industry as possible and flexing his muscle over the railroads. The railroad cartels were not in existence. Financial cartels were in disarray. Banking cartels in the US were still reeling from Jackson's Bank War. In 1862, citizens were free men and women. Only these natural persons enjoyed Constitutional protections. The legal fiction of corporations as persons with Constitutional protection as natural persons did not exist. The 14th amendment didn't exist.
Today, corporations do enjoy equal protection under the Constitution. They also enjoy First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, Fourth Amendment rights, Fifth Amendment rights, Sixth Amendment rights, etc. This makes them parties to the Constitutional relationships Obama has to confront. Lincoln did not have this problem.
Today's financial cartels and industrial cartels are extremely powerful. Their hold over congress is well documented. They exercise their power through an army of lobbyists loyal to the interests of Big Oil, Pharma, the Telcos, Wall Street, and their bastard child, the Military-Industrial Complex. It doesn't matter whether Bernanke or his deputy Ronald Kohn serves as chairman. Neither one is going to let Alan Grayson examine their books.
In the final analysis, tonight we will have an opportunity to hear an extraordinary man confronting extraordinary challenges from extraordinarily powerful criminal interests. But words are no longer enough. Action is long overdue. Hopefully, Obama will take another page from Lincoln, who had to confront the lackluster performance of General McClellan.
My Dear McClellan:
If you are not using the army, I should like to borrow it for a short while.
Yours respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
If the president wants to change the arc of history, it's time to start sending out "Dear McClellan" tweets to the folks who are dithering in the trenches -- whether they think they work for him or not.
