Like so many cultural events that were scheduled before the November 8, 2016, presidential election to take place afterward, playwright Tony Kushner and author Sarah Vowell’s initial public appearance together as experts on Abraham Lincoln took on new meaning when the votes were counted. Originally intended as a tribute to the 16th president of the United States, the evening inevitably evolved when confronted with the new reality represented by the country’s 45th president, a man who has, in his own way, redefined what it means to be a Republican president just as drastically as his distant predecessor.
A little more than a year later, the duo of Vowell and Kushner take to the stage again, this time on a nationwide tour to discuss The Lincoln Legacy: The Man and His Presidency. Fortuitous timing (along with UCSB Arts & Lectures) brings them to Campbell Hall on Tuesday, February 20, one day after the President’s Day holiday and eight after Lincoln’s actual birthday. Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award–winning author of the epic play Angels in America, wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Vowell, a renowned essayist and familiar voice from her years as a contributor to the This American Life radio broadcasts, has written several nonfiction books on American history, including Assassination Vacation, in which she retraces the steps of the men who killed presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Together they command an extraordinary range of knowledge about the man who many consider the greatest of all American presidents, and what’s more, they bring the wit and passion of truly great writers to the task of translating Lincoln’s legacy into contemporary terms.
I was fortunate to speak with Vowell and Kushner in successive phone calls over the weekend of February 10-11, and what emerged from those conversations was a profoundly moving sense of their personal love for and devotion to the memory of a man whose unsurpassed eloquence set a standard for American leadership that has yet to be equaled. As Vowell put it in the opening moments of our talk, and in regard to the inevitable comparison of Lincoln’s verbal dignity to Donald Trump’s mendacious and vulgar blather, “Lincoln is very quotable, and it’s probably not nice of us to keep bringing him up because pretty much every president is lacking in comparison, but yes, this one more so than most.”