Word: lincolnisms
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...Lincolns' differences were more striking. The real Abe was psychologically complicated and politically inconstant, which means both Democrats and Republicans can comfortably impersonate him. When I asked A.L.P.er David Kreutz, a 63-year-old retired auto employee from Depew, N.Y., and a member of the state's liberal Working Families Party, to define Lincoln's greatness, he said, "I think his outstanding feature was to make such inroads from a poor family. He knew hardship." But ask conservative Republican Chester Damron, 71, the same question, and the Seventh-Day Adventist minister from Michigan says, "I respect his honesty and integrity...
...Lincolns, Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, Ky., put it best: "A lot of people try to make him be what they want him to be." But the remarkable thing about Lincoln is that he is still remaking people himself. Take Jimmie Ray Rubin of Prosperity, W.Va. The 12th of 14 children, Rubin was born 73 years ago in a coal camp in nearby Lillybrook. He worked at a Laundromat and a newspaper to put himself through local colleges and eventually became a social worker. A veteran, Rubin also became commander of his American Legion post and a vets' advocate in Charleston...
...Rubin was never much of a reader, and upon his retirement, in 1995, he spent a lot of time on his five La-Z-Boys with ESPN. Fortuitously, in 1997 a presenter from Ohio--Ralph Borror, who runs abraham-lincoln.net--did a Lincoln event at a mall near Rubin's house. Rubin, who has Lincoln's protuberant nose, his scraggly eyebrows, his height (Rubin is 6 ft. 3 in.; Lincoln was 6 ft. 4 in.) and his beard--grown years ago--was surprised, and a bit envious, that someone over at the mall would pay a man to come down from...
...wife Edna's astonishment, Rubin bought a shelfful of Lincoln books and flipped from ESPN to the History Channel. He also went online and met Lincolns around the country, who helped him learn the trade secrets (you can pay $300 for a beaver top hat like Lincoln's, but a hand-me-down from the local theater troupe will do; always have a snappy response to kids' favorite question: "Aren't you dead?"; a little piece of pencil eraser affixed above the right corner of your mouth can serve as Lincoln's prominent mole; if you're not quite...
...outright invent history, but often it is made by the questions we ask. Few figures have provoked more questions than Abraham Lincoln, both because of his broad importance and his fantastic complexity. And few figures have proved so malleable...