Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

92 S politics and governance
Lincoln continues to inspire in our time because he framed the
legalities of Constitution and war within a larger context of history,
obligation, human dignity, and fundamental rights.
The multiple problems of climate change and sustainability
will not be solved by this generation, or even the next. Our challenge
is to get the name of the thing right and do so in such a way
as to create the possibility that they might someday be resolved.
Lincoln’s example is instructive to us because he understood the
importance of preserving the larger framework in which the lesser
art of defi ning particular issues might proceed with adequate
deliberation and due process, which is to say that he understood
that the art of defi ning issues is a means to reach larger ends. In
our time many things that ought to be and must be sustained
are in jeopardy, the most important of which are those qualities
Lincoln used in defi ning the specifi c matter of slavery: clarity,
courage, generosity, kindness, wisdom, and humor.
S
A second example of leadership instructive to our time is the
history of the fi rst one hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt’s
presidency. In 1933 Roosevelt faced unprecedented challenges of
economic collapse and a deteriorating global order. His immediate
task was to restore confi dence in government, head off total
economic ruin, and possibly avert a revolution that many thought
to be imminent. The period of his fi rst hundred days is a model
for restoring public confi dence, even though he did not solve the
underlying problems of the economy.
The phrase “the hundred days” was fi rst prominently used to
mark the time between Napoleon’s escape from Elba and his fi nal
defeat at Waterloo in 1815. President Franklin Roosevelt used the
phrase to commemorate the period between the opening of the
73rd Congress on March 9, 1933, and its closing on June 17 (Alter,
2006, p. 273; Cohen, 2009). Roosevelt assumed the presidency at