The saccharine hagiography in which Ben traffics is depressing in the extreme. Turning Lincoln into a saint of course causes everyone who knows better (and that takes in a lot of territory) to guffaw in embarrassment for the hapless writer, but it also makes Abe a lot less interesting. If you read the fairly even-handed biography that David Herbert Donald wrote about Lincoln (or even the glorious evisceration by the poet Edgar Lee Masters), you’ll read a great deal about a man who wasn’t all that great a human being, but at least he wasn’t boring, and, really, isn’t being a bore the one really unforgivable sin? Hmmmm.

Very fair of you, btw, to credit Ben with a fine speaking voice.