Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Donald Trump vs Abraham Lincoln

I particularly chose to critique an opinion from The Washington Post titled Five things Donald Trump could learn from Abraham Lincoln. I believe the intended audience is any American, looking at the comparison of our new president versus the great Abraham Lincoln himself.

In this opinion by author Donald Nieman, he urgently claims that their are 5 Lessons that President Trump might learn from Abraham Lincoln. To summarize these 5 lessons are listed as follows:
1) Grow a thick skin, 2) Engage your critics strategically, 3) Be informed and ask questions, 4) Adapt, change and grow, and 5) Use words carefully. Mr. Nieman brings evidence from past history of President Lincoln and how he handled his time in office, and how our now 45th president is holding up to the high standards. I think his logic behind the article is a very clever one, because it shows just how much Donald Trump's approach differs from presidents before him, but also how he needs to not let critics become the center point of his focus when there is so much more important things at hand to address for America.

When Mr. Lincoln was hassled and attacked verbally by critics, he didn't take the bait, he simply said, "No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including...the loss of self control." You see, I agree with Mr. Nieman's claim of how Trump can learn from Lincoln, because Trump can be so temperamental and combative with the issues he's faced with or criticism that he receives from others, that if he even remotely learned 1 of these 5 lessons, he would understand that less is indeed more.


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