Abraham Lincoln was a chump.
Oh, that’s not my opinion, but in one respect it seems to be Donald Trump’s.
As we have learned, Qatar gave Trump a $400 million Boeing 747 for use as a new Air Force One. When he leaves office, he said, he plans to transfer the aircraft, which some describe as a “flying palace,” to his presidential library.
Trump said that to refuse such a monumental gift he’d have to be “stupid.”
Lincoln would have rightly thought otherwise. And so does the government watchdog group Common Cause, which observed, “The President of the United States should serve the people, not wealthy foreign governments, but Trump has once again shown that he is for sale to the highest bidder.”
The offer of big foreign gifts to a president – acceptance of which is unconstitutional without Congressional approval – is nothing new. In fact, Honest Abe himself once turned down some really big ones: Elephants.
The king of Siam – now Thailand – in a gesture of friendship, had offered the pachyderms to Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan, in 1861. But when Lincoln assumed office a few weeks later, he became responsible for deciding whether to accept several pairs of the great beasts.
When the king – apparently no expert on wildlife – heard that the United States had no native elephants, he offered to send breeding stock so the rugged animals could help with national development. But just as there will be heavy expenses in retrofitting the Qatar plane, his Siamese majesty noted that getting elephants over here would require expensive retrofitting of a ship.
If the President and Congress provided a vessel loaded with hay and equipped with stalls and water tanks, wrote the king, “We on our part will procure young male and female elephants and forward them one or two pairs at time.”
Then, according to his letter in the National Archives, the elephants could provide muscle and transportation “through uncleared woods and matted jungles where no carriage and cart roads have yet been made.”
Lincoln politely demurred, explaining to the king that our borders stop well before any latitudes conducive to elephants, and that steam power had already replaced the strength of animals.
As well, Lincoln declined keeping gifts including a costly sword and two massive Siamese elephant tusks, because “our laws forbid the President from receiving these rich presents as personal treasures.”
Lincoln said the items would be preserved in government archives as tokens of mutual friendship between the two nations.
It’s ironic that in the decade following his assassination, Lincoln’s Republican Party would come to be represented by an elephant, thanks to cartoonist Thomas Nast, who portrayed the party that way in Harper’s Weekly.
As his 217th birthday approaches Feb.12, and as we watch corruption, chaos, and murder sanctioned by the current White House, we would do well to contemplate this warning from our 16th president:
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
A cogent thought, and one – speaking of elephants – to be remembered.
So, Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln!
Wish you were here.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.