Abe-O-Meter: Hilary and Abe (and God)

In a recent interview with Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham referenced Lincoln in a question he posed to Clinton concerning her religious faith. The exchange went like this:

Meacham: My sense of your theological world view, to oversimplify, is that it is more in line with Lincoln and Niebuhr than with, say, more feel-good kinds of evangelism. Life is tragic, and all that.

Clinton: Yes. Life is tragic, human beings are flawed, you can't take anything or anyone for granted, it may not be there tomorrow, and you have to rely on yourself—and hopefully, if you are a good person, you will also take care of other people on the way and try to give them the opportunities to also withstand the vagaries and vicissitudes of life.

"Life is tragic, and all that"? This, according to Meacham, is Lincoln's theological paradigm?

I know it's too much to expect, in an interview like this, to see a sophisticated treatment of a subject as complex and controversial as Lincoln's religious views. But I'd like to think that, if the editor of one of the biggest news magazines on earth feels the need to discuss Lincoln's faith, he could come up with something better than, "life is tragic and all that." Sheez.

So I'll cut Hilary some slack here, because she was posed such a simpleminded question. Still, her answer comes across as the sort of thing you see from someone who doesn't quite know what their talking about, and so chooses the vaguest and most generalized language available in the hope that a basic ignorance of the answer will go unnoticed (and I say that while recognizing that Hilary Clinton, for all her flaws, is a very bright person). Sort of like the answers I get from students who haven't actually read any of the books I've assigned.

I mean, there's nothing really objectionable in Hilary's answer; but on the other hand, she doesn't say much of anything, either. Suppose for example Meacham had said something like, "Well, Hilary, I think your religious views look an awful lot like Millard Fillmore's." Would Hilary's answer have looked any different?

Bottom line: this is the sort of exchange that'll make me reach for Sports Illustrated rather than Newsweek the next time I'm stuck waiting in the dentist's office. One stovepipe hat out of five.