As the president fought for his economic recovery agenda, the Republicans launched a fierce counterattack. The president’s plan, according to Newt Gingrich, would “kill jobs” and “actually increase the deficit.”

This was not Gingrich criticizing the Obama stimulus program in 2009. It was Gingrich attacking then-President Bill Clinton’s economic plan in 1993.

This week, as President Barack Obama promises to spend more of the stimulus money to improve the economy, Republicans — including some of the same spokesmen — are on the attack again. “Bureaucrats managing companies does not work,” Gingrich said recently. “Politicians dominating the economy does not work.”

To be fair, Republicans should fight for free markets and free trade. History shows that the invisible hand of the marketplace works more effectively than the heavy hand of government. And much of Obama’s economic agenda appears to be all motion and little action.

But when Republicans paint a dark picture of economic doom, they also paint themselves into a political corner.

The lessons of the 1990s should give Republicans pause. After Clinton increased both spending and taxes in 1993, the economy began a steady ascent. Sure, when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they reduced taxes and balanced the budget, undoubtedly helping this growth and prosperity. But in 1996, voters instead remembered the overheated GOP rhetoric of the early ’90s, considered the country’s economic strength and voted Clinton into a second term.

Republicans should reflect on this past. As they oppose the Obama agenda, they need to do it the right way, and they need to do it in a way that doesn’t contradict their core economic message.

The American economy is stronger than the policies of any one administration. The creativity of America’s entrepreneurs can overcome any of the federal government’s policies. In fact, throughout American history, economic downturns have often led entrepreneurs to create new products and services that have led to new economic growth. Any Republican message needs to begin by acknowledging that the economy will bounce back. It always has; it always will.

Perhaps no one possessed a better grasp of America’s economic power than Ronald Reagan. Yet when Reagan addressed excessive government, he often spoke in measured, philosophical terms. “They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy,” Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater. In other words, big government won’t destroy the economy — it just won’t help it very much. That’s a much firmer terrain from which to fight the Obama administration.

In his 1981 inaugural address, Reagan posed a simple question: “But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” These were not the words of an ideologue but, rather, the wisdom of a populist who put his faith in the people — not the government — to restore the economy.

For today’s Republicans, rather than oversimplified characterizations of economic decline, why not bet on the American entrepreneur? Instead of saying Obama will kill jobs or ruin the economy, why not argue the larger principle that businesses can resurrect the economy better and faster than the government can?

We know the economy will recover. We also know that, when it does, it will be in spite of Obama’s spending, not because of it.

But Republicans are setting the stage for an Obama encore by insisting that his policies will fail. When the economy inevitably returns to growth, Obama will be well-positioned for reelection. And if he is, perhaps he’ll quote the governor of Alaska and say, “I told you so.”

Kasey S. Pipes authored “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality” and wrote speeches for then-President George W. Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23586.html#ixzz0IVmQ54V2&C

‘The First Tycoon’ by T.J. Stiles: a

look at the life of America’s first corporate titan

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 17, 2009

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. On Jan. 27, 1870, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad convened its first stockholders’ meeting. The merger of the previously separate rail companies marked a watershed moment in American history: the beginning of the giant corporation in American economic life. And it was made possible by one man: Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Long before Gates, Walton or Perot, there was Vanderbilt. The first great corporate titan in American history, the Commodore’s reputation has largely evolved into a caricature. It started with Mark Twain, a contemporary whose satire suggested the Commodore had no soul. But it was sealed by Matthew Josephson, whose 1934 book, The Robber Barons, cast Vanderbilt as a leading villain in a cast of rogues who stormed the economic stage in the late 1800s.

In recent years, Ron Chernow has reassessed J.D. Rockefeller and Jean Strouse has re-examined J.P. Morgan. Now, T.J. Stiles recasts Vanderbilt not as a villain, but as a visionary whose surreal life was matched only by his stunning legacy.

In The First Tycoon Stiles does more than trace the journey of a man; he tracks the evolution of a country. The Commodore’s career began in steamboats when America still operated as a largely agrarian society. Later, as the railroad titan, he literally helped transport America into the industrial age. Above all, the king of the railroads was an agent of change.

First, he changed the way America conducts business by creating the giant corporation. As Stiles writes:

“By consolidating two companies of great size and financial health, it created a single behemoth on an unprecedented scale. This new entity, the giant corporation, would spread into manufacturing, as seen first in Standard Oil and later in other industries, beginning with a great wave of mergers from 1895 to 1904; eventually it would dominate every other sector of the economy as well.”

From that point forward, the American economy would feature economies of scale that helped reduce prices and increase productivity. It also helped create a managerial middle class as more Americans began to work for the new giant corporations.

Vanderbilt also changed American finance. When he first ascended to the presidency of the New York Central, he decided to do more than build railroads, according to Stiles. Instead, “he would be a creator of the invisible world, a conjurer in the financial ether.” In March 1867, his plan to essentially create stock splits (increasing the amount of stock by issuing new shares) was approved to much outrage in the financial world. In the 20th century, it became a common Wall Street practice.

And Vanderbilt changed American law. Earlier in his career, his steamboat operation was so successful that the owners of a rival company sued. In the Supreme Court case, Gibbons vs. Ogden, the court upheld the federal government’s right to regulate commerce and overturned a state law that gave Vanderbilt’s competitors a virtual monopoly.

Stiles writes vividly of the Commodore’s life and times, showing his personal failings but focusing on his professional successes. His book is blessed with timing, as the recent market collapse might create interest in a man who laid the foundation for so much of corporate America. And this thorough and thoughtful book serves as an important corrective that unmasks the Vanderbilt caricature and reveals a more nuanced, complex and interesting portrait.

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. Historians have long argued over the intentions of the men who gathered in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. As the world’s oldest living constitution, the document has triggered several waves of revision.

In the early 20th century, Charles Beard wrote that the Constitution was created as a business arrangement by men of commerce and privilege. In the Cold War, Carl Van Doren argued that the Philadelphia agreement provided an example for how nations could unite just as the colonies had united years before.

But in the 1960s, Catherine Drinker Bowen produced perhaps the greatest book on the Constitutional Convention, The Miracle at Philadelphia. To her, the document produced by the 55 men from 12 states (Rhode Island did not participate) after five months represented a miracle. And though she labeled its authors as great men, not gods, to many Americans the event seems almost biblical, with the founding fathers descending like Moses from Mount Sinai with the great document for their people.

Richard Beeman tells a very different story in Plain, Honest Men. His account shows very human leaders struggling with the difficult political challenges and offers more drama and less divinity.

The challenge facing the men at Philadelphia was at once simple and profound: how to improve upon the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation without overly empowering the government.

On more than one occasion after the revolution, the Colonies had almost destroyed their new nation. George Washington had to face down a mutiny from his own soldiers when Congress would not pay them. Massachusetts received little help when farmers’ anger over debt and taxes erupted into Shay’s Rebellion. The new nation could not tax its citizens nor defend itself. Clearly, the Articles of Confederation were not working.

As Beeman writes, “something drastic needed to be done to save their experiment in liberty and union.”

And so what began in Philadelphia as an effort to improve the Articles of Confederation evolved into a conference to draft a new Constitution. Beeman painstakingly re-creates the debates in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House. The debates produced monumental achievements such as the creation of a three-branch government, including a bicameral legislature. There were failures, as well, the continuation of slavery among them.

Skillfully, Beeman uses character development to drive his narrative. Specifically, he focuses on James Madison, Ben Franklin and George Washington as the three men who helped “make the revolution of 1787 possible.” Madison offered ideas, plans and creativity; Franklin facilitated key compromises; and Washington’s presence and prestige gave the proceedings immediate legitimacy.

The result was a Constitution that still works and inspires today. Far from a miracle, Beeman argues that founding father Robert Morris correctly judged it as something else:

“While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men.”

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.

books@dallasnews.com

Plain, Honest Men

The Making of the

American Constitution

Richard Beeman

(Random House, $30)

Why Obama should confront his base

By KASEY S. PIPES | 3/23/09 4:45 AM EDT

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Two months into Barack Obama’s presidency, the country has seen a man with immense political talent. Calm and calculating, the new president possesses a natural ability to lead and a remarkable degree of emotional intelligence. He’s in control of himself; but is he in control of his party?

Like a swan on water, Obama glides gracefully along the surface while below his kicking never stops. So far, the kicking has hit only Republicans. Not long after assuming office, the president waved and smiled as he entered a Capitol Hill meeting with congressional Republicans. Once the doors were closed, he taunted them that “I won” and then mocked them for listening to Rush Limbaugh. This was power politics; but it was also easy posturing. Who isn’t beating up on congressional Republicans these days?

More impressive would be a show of force against his own base. History teaches that leaders have to fight battles with their own people. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan ignited a conservative explosion when he nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. Yet his unwavering support for her helped convince many Americans who hadn’t voted for him that Reagan was his own man. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton elevated this craft to an art form. Faced with a Democratic Party in Congress that leaned left, Clinton regularly looked for ways to show his independence. His work with Republicans produced welfare reform, NAFTA, a balanced budget and even a capital gains tax cut.

Obama could learn from these two presidents. But the learning curve appears steep. Little in his background suggests a willingness to confront his own party. His voting record in the Senate consisted of mainly party line votes. And his presidential campaign mostly hid fairly stale Democratic ideas behind fresh new packaging.

Since taking office, scant evidence has emerged that Obama wants to defy congressional Democrats. This strategy has hurt him. Take the stimulus, for example. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi inserted pet projects like funding for condoms (and then embarrassed herself trying to defend the idea), Obama’s brand suffered. This episode should have warned the president: Congressional Democrats possess their own agenda. At some point, he needs to acknowledge that and confront them.

Fortunately, one example does exist of Obama finally, grudgingly confronting an ally: his speech on Jeremiah Wright. No, not the vaunted Philadelphia speech. But the speech a month later in North Carolina. In Philadelphia, Obama skillfully wove an elaborate rhetorical argument to clothe and conceal an embarrassing relationship. But then the Wright shenanigans continued. A month later in North Carolina, Obama was forced to finally denounce his mentor. “I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people,” Obama said, contrasting himself with Wright, “That’s in my DNA.” This perfect metaphor gave him the moral authority to separate himself from Wright’s divisive words and ways. Delivering this rebuke of his longtime pastor must have pained Obama. But it was necessary; and he did it effectively.

Where can the president confront his party today? The Congressional Democrats’ desire to pass card check legislation presents a potential opportunity. Card check would effectively eliminate the secret ballot when employees vote on whether to unionize. In opposing this, the president could say: “I support labor. But right now, my job is to help create jobs. Let’s get the economy moving again. We can discuss labor reforms later.” This would show the president is committed to improving the economy and willing to confront his own base to do it.

In politics, it’s not just what the president says about the issues, it’s what the issues say about the president. After all, anyone can confront an enemy, but it takes a leader to confront a friend.

Kasey S. Pipes (www.kaseyspipes.com) wrote speeches for President George W. Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and authored “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”

‘With Wings Like Eagles’ by

Michael Korda: A fresh look at the Battle of Britain

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, January 11, 2009

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.

In the summer and fall of 1940, the world’s fate hinged on the Battle of Britain. Had the Nazi Luftwaffe prevailed in its air assault on England, the war might have ended. But the British victory ensured the war would continue until the United States joined and tipped the power balance.

That story has been told before. Now, Michael Korda provides a fresh, new account of the man most responsible for victory in With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.

Korda, a former editor-in-chief at Simon and Schuster and a Royal Air Force veteran, takes a personal interest in the story. His uncle, Sir Alexander Korda, was listed by the Gestapo as a person to be arrested once the invasion of England was complete. But that invasion was stopped by the RAF.

Often, accounts of this battle focus on Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This is no accident. When he was asked how history would remember him, Churchill famously answered that it would remember him well since he intended to write it. He did, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his World War II memoir. But in With Wings Like Eagles, the author manages to move the prime minister into a supporting role – no easy task.

Instead, Korda shines the spotlight on Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding. He led the RAF Fighter Command from its creation in 1936. In those days, the fighter plane was the weak stepchild to the proud, muscular bomber. “The bomber will always get through,” theorized military planners before World War II. Dowding disagreed. He foresaw the fighter plane’s importance.

“Dowding had a good picture in his mind of the battle to come,” Korda writes, “and what it would take to win.” He began planning for dogfights in the air, and meticulously oversaw the implementation of radar and radio control of aircraft, as well as the creation of new single-engine monoplanes, such as the eight-gun Spitfire.

When the Nazi air assault came in 1940, the RAF pilots were ready. By September, the battle ended in Hitler’s first defeat. Mr. Korda writes, “Perhaps without even realizing it, Hitler lost the war, defeated by the efforts of perhaps 1,000 young men.”

Ironically, perhaps Dowding’s greatest battle occurred not with his enemy but with his prime minister. As the Battle of France had ended and the Battle of Britain was beginning, Churchill favored sending fighter planes to France to help repel the Nazis. Dowding saw that France was lost and that any planes sent across the channel would be lost, as well. His refusal saved many fighter planes for the English and helped win the Battle of Britain.

But Dowding possessed vices as well as virtues. A difficult man, his sharp elbows had bruised many egos throughout his military career. As the Battle of Britain wound down, the Luftwaffe began nighttime raids that were strategically less important but still frightening. When the RAF Fighter Command proved less effective in combating these attacks, Dowding’s critics conspired to blame him and remove him from command.

But Dowding’s achievement in the Battle of Britain remains undiminished. “Few prophets have ever had a clearer picture of what was to come,” Korda eulogizes, “or what to do about it.”

Kasey S. Pipes is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.

With Wings Like Eagles

A History of the Battle of Britain

Michael Korda

(Harper, $25.99)

Getting to know Lincoln:

New biographies mark bicentennial

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, October 12, 2008

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com Kasey S. Pipes is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.” Even though the Lincoln landscape already is populated with many books, several authors have found new ground to cover ahead of the 200th anniversary of his birth in February. Here are some highlights:

Lincoln: The Biography
of a Writer

Fred Kaplan

(Harper, $27.95)

Available Oct. 28

Abraham Lincoln clearly belongs in the pantheon of political giants. According to literary historian Fred Kaplan, he also belongs among literary giants.

Mr. Kaplan explains that Lincoln wrote well because he read widely. He read, memorized and quoted poetry from Burns to Byron to Shakespeare. And like all good writers, he could take an idea he read elsewhere and re-phrase it in his own voice: In his schoolbook reader, Dillworth Speller, young Lincoln read that since Eden, man found himself enclosed by “the Angels above … and the Angels below.” Years later, this sentiment re-emerged and made history as Lincoln appealed to the “better angels of our nature.”

This gift for describing “linguistic tensions” allowed Lincoln to speak powerfully to a divided nation. He famously demonstrated this when he borrowed from another book he knew well, the Bible, to argue that a “house divided” couldn’t stand.

Tried by War

Abraham Lincoln as

Commander-in-Chief

James M. McPherson

(Penguin, $35)

Lincoln essentially created the commander-in-chief role, argues Civil War historian James M. McPherson. Setting aside James Madison’s forgettable performance during the War of 1812 and the relatively small-scale U.S.-Mexico War, Lincoln was the first president to serve as commander-in-chief during an all-encompassing conflict. He quickly realized that the war had many fronts, including the battlefield, the press and the public.

Lincoln’s counterpart, Jefferson Davis, possessed a stellar military background yet proved no match for Lincoln. The Illinoisan learned military strategy on the go and soon surpassed his generals in seeing the road to victory. When Gen. George Meade bragged about driving the enemy “from our soil,” Lincoln fumed: “The whole country is our soil.”

Thanks to his generals’ inability to see clearly, Lincoln made perhaps his most important strategic choice. He decided that war “was too important to be left to the generals,” writes Mr. McPherson.

Lincoln and

His Admirals

Craig L. Symonds

(Oxford, $27.95)

Available Friday

Craig L. Symonds, a naval historian at the United States Naval Academy, presents a commander-in-chief with little naval knowledge who nonetheless grew into an effective naval strategist. Long before Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt placed naval power in the heart of American military strategy in the 20th century, Lincoln came to see that even 19th-century warfare required a strong navy equipped with innovations that he personally pushed for, including armored warships and heavy guns.

As with his army generals, Lincoln leaned on his admirals and often prodded them. During Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, Lincoln directly intervened and overruled Adm. Louis Goldsborough, who hesitated to send ships up the James River. The ships helped capture Norfolk, a major turning point in the war. Not bad for a president who claimed he knew “but little about ships.”

Our Lincoln

New Perspectives on

Lincoln and His World

Edited by Eric Foner

(Norton, $27.95)

Available Monday

Our Lincoln provides a series of essays from noted Lincoln scholars, analyzing his legacy on everything from civil liberties to religion. Each portrait serves as a reminder that Lincoln’s warm glow in history was a raging fire of controversy during his lifetime.

Mark Neely describes Lincoln’s legal arguments in defense of suspending the writ of habeas corpus and his willingness to restore this writ later in the war. Eric Foner writes of Lincoln’s desire to see freed slaves transported out of America. (He supported colonization even after signing the Emancipation Proclamation but reconsidered after he began sending black soldiers into battle.)

And Richard Carwardine examines Lincoln’s skeptical faith and concludes the Civil War “encouraged an increasing profundity of faith.”

The essays show Lincoln just as many others have found him: complicated, conflicted and compelling.

Kasey S. Pipes is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”

Grand new ideas are GOP’s only hope

By KASEY S. PIPES | 6/25/08 4:37 AM EST

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In fall 2005, the Republican Party experienced a long, sleepless night. Concerned with Iraq, confounded by Katrina and cast into despair by Harriet Miers, party activists worried about the party’s future.

During this dusk, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam took to the pages of The Weekly Standard to urge Republicans to embrace the first light of a new era. How? By winning back working-class voters, or “Sam’s Club Republicans,” to use Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s phrase. In Washington, the article was widely read and well-regarded. The incomparable Michael Barone was so impressed he suggested that “numerous copies get over to the White House.”

Now, three years later, Douthat and Salam, both writers at The Atlantic, have expanded their article into a book, “Grand New Party: How the Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” They define working-class voters as “the non-college-educated voters who make up roughly half of the American electorate” and describe them as the swing voters.

The book is best understood as a rebuttal to Thomas Frank’s best-selling book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Frank hypothesized that while the majority of working-class voters care most about economics, they are tricked into voting Republican by faux cultural issues such as abortion, crime and traditional marriage.

Douthat and Salam disagree. They believe working-class voters understand a profound truth that eludes the sophisticated Frank: Cultural and economic issues are related. Ironically, it was a liberal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who famously articulated the conservative principle that poverty does not create broken families, but broken families create poverty. Douthat and Salam take this a step further and show that working-class voters appreciate traditional values because of the impact on their economic well-being. Marriage may be a trivial issue to Frank, but it’s an economic issue to the working class.

For example, higher divorce rates are a proud legacy of the sexual revolution, but divorce costs money and hurts the working class more than the upper class. Since “family stability is a prerequisite for financial stability,” the authors write, “working-class voters are less likely to benefit from sexual freedom and more likely to suffer from its side effects.”

The book ends with policy proposals. Having delved into the thicket of working-class issues, history and demographics, Douthat and Salam seek a path forward by offering a vast array of solutions. Some are new. Others are recycled. But all are designed to move the GOP away from libertarianism and toward limited government that helps the working class. Indeed, they argue, “the working class wants, and needs, more from public policy than simply to be left alone.” So they propose to help people economically and culturally, to address where they work and how they live.

To lessen economic instability and anxiety, the authors urge tax cuts. Since many working-class voters pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes, the authors suggest leaving income taxes alone and reducing payroll taxes.

To improve health care, they propose allowing families to set aside 15 percent of their income for Health Savings Accounts. If their annual health care costs exceeded this amount, the government would step in. Conversely, if money remained in their account at year’s end, families would keep it. This would reduce the primary problem with health care today: the market distortion created by people receiving health care through third-party insurance that drives up costs.

To enhance education, they propose sending money not to school districts but to school principals to spend as they see fit.

To strengthen families, they borrow from Ramesh Ponnuru’s revenue-neutral tax reform plan that would dramatically increase the child tax credit.

They also have plans on sprawl, crime, transportation and agriculture. Douthat and Salam seem to offer something for everything.

Unfortunately, many of these proposals seem too grand to be enacted or too small to make a difference.

Reducing payroll taxes, for example, likely will incur the wrath of angry senior groups arguing that it will reduce Medicare and Social Security funds. On the other hand, ideas such as creating more summer programs for kids sound a lot like the famous microagendas created by Dick Morris in the 1990s. Those Clinton proposals (i.e., school uniforms for kids, V-chips for parents) confused governing with campaigning. They garnered headlines, but they made little difference.

In short, many of the Douthat-Salam proposals that could help can’t pass, and many that could pass can’t help.

Still, the authors raise many important questions and offer more than a few interesting solutions. With Barack Obama poised to win the White House, Republicans need to rethink, recast and repackage their ideas to meet working-class voters’ needs.

“Grand New Party” provides a great starting point. John McCain should pick up a copy.

Kasey S. Pipes is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality” and previously wrote speeches for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He can be reached at www.kaseyspipes.com.

Democrats’ religion gap still wide open

By: Kasey S. Pipes
Mar 4, 2008 08:40 PM EST

Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) (pictured) introduced legislation to prevent abortions and provide services for women who don’t choose abortion. Photo: John Shinkle

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During the 2004 presidential campaign, Terry McAuliffe first met Rick Warren. “And what do you do?” the Democratic Party chairman asked one of the most famous evangelical pastors in America.

Recounting this story in “The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap,” Time editor Amy Sullivan effectively argues that after the 2004 election, Democrats got religion. But their salvation remains a work in progress.

Sullivan begins by neatly summarizing decades of social history to show how Vatican II mobilized Catholics and the 1960s counterrevolution galvanized evangelicals. Democrats became the “individual rights” party, and Republicans became the “individual responsibilities” party. Not surprisingly, voters of faith more often began filling Republican pews.

Some Democrats saw the gap widening and tried to bridge it. Sullivan writes admiringly of Bill Clinton, a “Bible-quoting, Catholic-educated Southern Baptist” who called his 1992 platform “The New Covenant.” Here, the author’s tightly spun argument begins to show loose threads.

For many social conservatives, one moral issue is more equal than others: abortion. Yes, evangelicals care about social justice and human rights, but they care most about what they view as life at its most vulnerable stage. Indeed, evangelicals view abortion as a social justice and human rights issue.

So when President Clinton vetoed legislation banning certain late-term abortions, his “safe, legal and rare” abortion policy was exposed as more slogan than solution. This did not help close the God gap. Still, the author praises Clinton for seeking a third way: Rather than outlawing abortion, he tried reducing it. Despite her efforts to rehabilitate Clinton’s record, the evidence suggests Clinton was trying to reduce the politics of abortion, not the practice of abortion.

Sullivan offers faint praise for Sen. John F. Kerry and his efforts to reach evangelicals in 2004. When an archbishop in St. Louis announced that Kerry shouldn’t take communion because of his abortion views, the senator didn’t respond. “As far as Kerry was concerned, the matter was private, between him and the church,” she writes dismissively. Throughout 2004, Kerry spoke little of his faith; evangelicals responded by giving him little of their support.

To Sullivan’s delight, Democrats are talking about faith now. And she likes what she hears. In particular, she cites examples of how Democrats are navigating through the abortion politics maze. Yet her examples raise questions about whether Democrats are interested in the politics or the policy of the issue.
In Congress, Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) introduced legislation to prevent abortions and provide services for women who don’t choose abortion. Ultimately, the bill was called the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.

But the bill was first dubbed the Abortion Reduction Act. When liberals complained that this implied there should be fewer abortions, Sullivan writes that the legislators “didn’t bat an eye” and changed its title. This marks a breakthrough in how Democrats view abortion?

Meanwhile, Democrat Bill Ritter successfully ran for governor of Colorado in 2006. When confronted by abortion rights supporters, Ritter promised to do little to restrict abortion. Instead, he pledged increased contraception services. “His goal would be lowering abortion rates through prevention, not restriction,” Sullivan summarizes. But haven’t most Democrats traditionally supported contraception? What makes this a different approach?

In short, Sullivan rightly claims evangelicals want abortions reduced. They do. But she wrongly assumes prevention will mollify them. It won’t. Evangelicals want to restrict abortion, too.

Despite Sullivan’s eloquent attempt to dress it up, the Democrats’ policy on abortion looks remarkably similar to that of years past. Democrats still appear to favor life in words and choice in policies.

Sullivan correctly warns that Republicans should not take evangelicals for granted. As former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says, life begins at conception but continues after birth. The life agenda now includes stopping sex trafficking, helping immigrants, fighting AIDS in Africa and protecting the environment.

Democrats and evangelicals share common ground on many of these issues. Of course, the life agenda also includes opposition to cloning and euthanasia — areas where many Democrats and evangelicals profoundly differ.

Still, Democrats and evangelicals should get to know each other better. Sullivan’s well-written, well-timed book makes an important contribution to this evolving relationship. She convincingly shows Democrats have gotten religion, even if they still don’t quite get abortion.

Kasey S. Pipes wrote speeches for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and is the author of “Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality.”

‘Douglass and Lincoln’ and ‘President Lincoln: Duty of a Statesman’ portray a master of statecraft

HISTORY: New books portray the Civil War president as a master of statecraft

By KASEY S. PIPES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
books@dallasnews.com The old debate over how and why Abraham Lincoln waged the Civil War gets a fresh look in two well-written and well-reasoned new titles.

In Douglass and Lincoln, historians Paul and Stephen Kendrick examine the symbiotic relationship between the Civil War’s foremost black leader and its foremost political leader.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became an abolitionist, believed the war should be fought to end slavery. Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer who became president, believed the war should be fought to preserve republican government. For four years, the heat of Douglass’ idealism helped refine the steel of Lincoln’s actions.

The relationship began badly. In his inaugural, Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone where it existed. Enraged, Douglass called the new president an “excellent slave hound.” But here, Lincoln’s reach exceeded Douglass’ grasp. The president understood that he had to keep the border slave states in the Union. Lose them and the war was lost before it began. Lincoln’s thinking may have shocked Douglass, but it saved the Union.

As the war evolved, so did the president’s thinking, with Douglass’ help. After their first White House meeting, Douglass was charmed: “I felt big in there.”

The two men began an ongoing conversation about the war’s meaning. As the battles raged, the abolitionist urged the president to use the last, great untapped source of manpower: African-Americans. Lincoln did, and black soldiers helped win the war.

But the president influenced Douglass, also. By the war’s end, Douglass decided that only Lincoln could have saved the Union and ended slavery. The authors conclude that the abolitionist finally appreciated the political minefield Lincoln navigated and understood his effort to balance “public opinion and justice.”

In President Lincoln: Duty of a Statesman, William Lee Miller explores this intersection between Lincoln’s moral vision and his pragmatic actions. Unlike Woodrow Wilson, Lincoln possessed both idealism and realism. He wanted to do the right thing; but he also wanted to do the thing right. “The morality of statecraft,” Mr. Miller writes, “entails layers of action and an awareness of sequences of consequences.” Mr. Miller, a noted Lincoln scholar at the University of Virginia, re-examines Lincoln’s decisions using the bifocal lens of morality and reality.

Not one day into his term, Lincoln confronted his first crisis. Fort Sumter, a Union army garrison in South Carolina, was surrounded by rebels. In his inaugural, he had promised the South that the “government will not assail you.” He had also promised the North that he would “preserve, protect and defend” the Union. How would he do both?

He began by overruling his military adviser, Gen. Winfield Scott, who told him the fort could not hold. The president didn’t disagree. But he saw Sumter in moral, not just military, terms. To surrender the fort would demoralize the North. And it violated his own pledge to protect the Union.

Since he had also promised not to attack the South, Lincoln supplied the fort with food, not ammunition. And, in a masterstroke, he informed the governor of South Carolina, thus tempting the rebels to commence “firing on bread,” as he put it. They did. The war began. And Lincoln’s policies had matched his principles.

“Morality in statecraft,” Mr. Miller writes, “does not lead one away from reality but requires one to attend to it.” No American ever mastered statecraft with more precision, more purpose or more power than Abraham Lincoln.

Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for President Bush, is the author of Ike’s Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality. He lives in Fort Worth and can be reached at www.kaseyspipes.com.