INTERVIEWER: Mr. PresidentMr. President, are you aware of how the current POTUS compares himself to you?
LINCOLN: Strange term, but oh, yes. I had no idea the presidency could be so entertaining. Seems it’s the ultimate toy for a rich, big boy. (Chuckle) If he feels as put-upon as I was, and the Constitutional existence of the nation is not at stake, somebody should remind him of how I wound up – and give him a chance to hightail it out of there while he’still in one piece.
INTERVIEWER: But, Mr. President, don’t you find a personality of that type to be a danger to the country?
LINCOLN: That’s one of the pitfalls of the system. That is why voters must remain alert at all times. How do you think the war of disunion would have fared if Douglas or McClellan had been there instead of I? Seward, I wouldn’t have worried about -- after he got over the fact that I was not a blithering idiot, we did quite well together. It was he who added that beautiful phrase to my First Inaugural speech – about the, “Mystic chords of memory.” I, however, wrote every word of that Gettysburg piece – despite the fact that nobody there heard a word of what I said that day.
INTERVIEWER: Mr. Lincoln, what affect do you think you would have had on Reconstruction?
LINCOLN: The war violently interrupted a social structure that had been in place for two hundred and forty years. JohnsonJohnson hated both the planers and the Negroes. I think a little love for both would have made it easier. Grant did the best he could, but there were not enough troops in the world to contain the shame and humiliation of that backlash.
INTERVIEWER: Are you surprised that remnants of racism still exist?
LINCOLN: Naw, I grew up in the middle of it, and was never able to understand it. The South adopted it to support their supposed superiority – both ’Antebellum and afterwards. For the rest of the nation, it was mainly a class thing based on color. The human is a pack animal, despite the brains and ingenuity, that instinct remains. We are not all devil or all angel; that is why I suggest that we always seek our better angel. As long as most folks agree to abide by the rules, the incidental rebels can be controlled. The problem with the South was the problem with the Founding. The big crack that was left, was breached. You can see, even as we squeaked by that big eruption, and amended the Constitution it still took a hundred years for the courts to work it out. Those little, residual dust-ups of the 21st century are not a surprise. You will always have them in one form or another.
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying, then, Mr. Lincoln, that the advent of Donald Trump is a natural occurrence?
LINCOLN: Oh, yes. He is the innate result of a flawed system. It’s not going to be easy, but you had better find a way to get rid of that antiquated Electoral College. Bush V. Gore should have been the bell weather on that. In your modern times, you can’t spend two years electioneering, then a whole other month trying to determine who the winner is.
INTERVIEWER: As to your war and its derivative aftermath, Mr. President, how do you judge the progress of the nation? What do you think about our technology and the expansion of our influence?
LINCOLN: Well, I was excited by the railroad, photography and the telegraph. I certainly am not surprised by advances in transportation and electronic communication. I haven’t quite become accustomed to the idea of lifting all of that weight through the atmosphere -- and then on to outer space! Oh, I suppose it’s only natural to let your head swell a bit, and try to get other folks to live like you. You haven’t quite learned your lesson yet, but I can see it dawning upon you.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have an opinion on the two World Wars, Mr. Lincoln?
LINCOLN: That impulsive Teddy Bear would have had us over there at the first shot, in 1914. Wilson – leaving aside his glaring personal defects – was able to maintain a proper, neutral position, until the Zimmerman Telegram forced his hand. In the end, it was pitiful to see him personally plowed under by his precious Fourteen Points. By the time of Pearl Harbor, all FDR had to do was declare the war in which he already, surreptitiously, had been engaged. Being the least affected, after all that carnage, of course, we remained King of the Hill – a position which currently is being jeopardized by the folly of a third of the electorate and that anachronistic Electoral College. Remember how the Weimar Republic was subverted through the electoral process in 1933.
INTERVIEWER: John Wilkes Booth…
LINCOLN: Handsome young man; good actor. He understood drama; was steeped in Shakespeare. When everything has been said, it is dénouement time; the curtain is “closed; and all the actors leave the stage.
INTERVIEWER: Good night, sweet prince, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
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