Sorry friends, but even as we launch a New Year (and a happy one to you!), 2004, a presidential election year, the War in Iraq and the War on Terrorism continue to occupy much of the conversation on the Front Porch.

After this offering, I promise to leave this issue for at least two months. The capture of Saddam (the bearded Saddam on the cover of Newsweek elicited a quizzical “Santa?” from my 20-month-old grandson) seems to have rekindled the conversation. Indeed, it triggered a several-point positive jump in the polls for the president, and political pundits began to write prematurely the eulogy for Dean’s campaign because of his opposition to the war.

Both reactions miss the point: The capture of Saddam does not put Iraq on an inevitable trajectory to democracy American style, nor does it suggest that the war’s end will be hastened.

What is at work in all of this is an incredible, simplistic arrogance on the part of America, which assumes that the world’s people are just itching to abandon centuries of history, tradition and culture and embrace the American way of democratic politics, American meaning of freedom, and American capitalism because they are so self-evidently successful. Never mind that we know that concepts like democracy, freedom, liberty, etc., have different connotations in different cultural settings.

This notion is not new to America. It has a long, strong history. The Puritans, under the leadership of John Winthrop, were to establish a “City On a Hill,” which under the guidance of Providence would serve as a light and example to the rest of the world, especially Europe.

That translated into the ravaging of the Native American population as we expanded to the Pacific on the wings of Manifest Destiny – ordained by the Creator, no less!.

At the end of the 19th century, American Imperialism, espoused by Adm. Mahan, Yellow Journalism and Theodore Roosevelt took us global as we took charge of the Philippines. And, most recently, that same sense of a special people with a grand destiny took us to Vietnam and a significant “comeupance,” which we seek to forget emotionally and intellectually.

Sen. J. William Fulbright, the brilliant chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Vietnam era, recognized this pernicious strand in the character of the American fabric when he abandoned Lyndon Johnson, a president of his own party, by announcing his opposition to the War in Vietnam. He wrote about it in his enduring book, “The Arrogance of Power,” in 1966. Revisiting that work is especially relevant in today’s context. I recommend that Senators Snowe and Collins read it, and I can only hope that President Bush along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice read it as well. Regrettably, I think the latter folks only read each others memos, and the president does not read at all.

Listen to what Fulbright has to say. “There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is good-humored, the other solemn; the one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other if filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other is arrogant in the use of great power.”

Do Fulbright’s two America’s ring true today for you? The America of self-criticism, good humor, judiciousness, generosity and humaneness has been lead by the likes of Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, F.D.R. and Carter. The other, predominant at this time, characterized by self-righteousness, passionate intensity, pontificating, and arrogance has been lead by Jackson, T. R., McKinley, Wilson, Reagan, Johnson, and Bush. Both Americas hold sway in both major parties. It is fair to ask, which America do you prefer? The answer to that question should be important to you in deciding whom you will support in 2004 — assuming that the Democrats nominate Dean, Kerry, Edwards or Clark. They represent, in varying degrees, the America of Lincoln; President Bush represents the America of T. R.

Make no mistake about it. This division of the complex American character suggested by Sen. Fulbright goes well beyond a simplistic notion that one is weak and the other strong. Both stand for a strong America, engaged in the world in an attempt to make it a better place for all. Both traditions have strong moral foundations. But, as Fulbright pointed out, “one is the morality of decent instinct tempered by the knowledge of human imperfection and the other is the morality of absolute self-assurance fired by the crusading spirit. The one is exemplified by Lincoln who found it strange.. “that any man should dare ask for a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” The other is exemplified by T. R. who proclaimed it America’s right to exercise “internal police power in the hemisphere as the civilized nation justified in interfering in the affairs of other nations to set them right.”

Friends, on this Front Porch we think it is time to decide–the land of Lincoln or the land of Teddy Roosevelt. As is often the case, it is often the poets that give us the clues to the answers to the hard questions in life. In this matter, Sen. Fulbright cited the famed poet Archibald Macleish who wrote of our great country of promise: “…of you look closely and listen well, there is a human warmth, a human meaning which nothing has killed…and which nothing is likely to kill…What has always held this country together is an idea–a dream if you will–a large and abstract thought of the sort the realistic and sophisticated may reject but mankind can hold to.”

Lincoln’s ideal of the American character is “an idea that mankind can hold to.” We must embrace it and reject what is now on display in Iraq which seems to be driven by self-righteousness and a ridiculously ahistorical, simplistic notion of good and evil, right and wrong that goes before the fall.

Lincoln’s America claims both parties. Maine’s great leaders have surely been exemplars of that tradition–Muskie, Smith, Mitchell. Currently, Representatives Allen and Michaud are squarely in that camp, and Senators Snowe and Collins struggle to moderate that “big stick” (shock and awe, “bring em on”) president, and I believe their hearts are with Lincoln.

Where is your heart? The answer matters greatly in 2004.

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