Hillary Clinton, during last Sunday's presidential debate, invoked the example of Abraham Lincoln to help explain her thinking for her choice of words in a speech to Goldman Sachs.
In the speech, which was partially released by wiki-leaks, Clinton says that a leader sometimes needs to hold a public opinion and a private opinion while dealing with certain issues. When asked about this belief, Clinton said:
"I was making the point that it is hard sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do and you have to keep working at it. And, yes, President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great — I thought a great display of presidential leadership."
Harvard Historian Nancy Koehn joined Boston Public Radio on Tuesday to talk about this reference and to elaborate on Lincoln's course to abolish slavery. “He used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great — I thought a great display of presidential leadership.”
Secretary of State Clinton said there is a public side to leadership and there is a private side. "That is inevitably true," said Koehn, 'but I don’t think that is what she really meant. I don’t think that’s the way Lincoln thought about it. Lincoln was a deft politician and even a more deft leader. A good leader and all good managers have to be able to frame an issue in different ways for different constituencies. That doesn’t mean you blow with the wind."
