How It's Done

Mrs Myeshia Johnson

NYT:

“When she got off the phone, she said, ‘He didn’t even know his name. He kept calling him, ‘Your guy,’ ” Ms. Wilson recalled the widow saying. “He was calling the fallen soldier, ‘your guy.’ And he never said his name because he did not know his name. So he kept saying, ‘Your guy. Your guy. Your guy.’ And that was devastating to her.”

I think 45* tried to say what John Kelly said from the podium yesterday. I think he had Kelly's words in his head, but he said it so badly, it made him look like a jerk.  

And of course, he is a jerk - there can be no mistake about that at this point. 

The guy has no soul and no honor, both of which are required if you're going to have even a marginally positive effect when trying to console someone who's just suffered the worse kind of loss any of us can imagine.

Starting at about 6:00, John Kelly says it really well.

I think 45* got a warm fuzzy feeling from the way Kelly puts it, because it sounds noble, and manly, and heroic - all the things 45* desperately wishes pertained to him. But those characteristics have nothing to do with 45*, so he's always looking to appropriate them for himself without doing the work necessary to earn them.

If he'd known just a tiny bit about it, he might've pulled it off, but 45* doesn't know anything. He doesn't really want to know anything. He doesn't listen. He doesn't study. He doesn't learn. He's never prepared.

So when he needed to say the right thing in a way that gave the grieving family someone to lean on; or a reason to feel something other than their crushing sorrow, he blew it. He screwed the pooch. Again. As always.

He failed at one of the basic duties of a Commander in Chief; a leader; POTUS. The guy isn't man enough to pack a lunch for any one of those dead kids. Because he refuses to learn one fucking thing about his fucking job.

This is how it's done:

(to Mrs Lydia Parker Bixby)

Executive Mansion,
Washington, 21st November, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln

-and-

(to 21-year-old Fanny McCollough, on the death of her father, Lt Col Wm McCollough)

Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 23, 1862.

Dear Fanny
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln.