Poker Players or Systems Analysts?

26 Dec 09

The Critical Presidential Election of 1864:

"You can be bold and risk defeat, or be passive and ensure it!"

Poker Players' Axiom

As Bill Sherman's Army energetically attacked and largely destroyed the City of Atlanta, GA in late summer of 1864, twice-fired, ex-Union general, George McClellan, was nominated by the Democrat Party as their presidential candidate, to oppose Republican (called the "National Union Party" at the time) Abraham Lincoln, running for his second term. The Democrat Party Platform that year made the attractive promise to a war-weary public that, when elected, they would initiate an immediate, unilateral cease-fire and thereafter negotiate directly with Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, with regard to permanent, settlement terms. McClellan himself privately favored unconditional, military victory against the Confederacy and accordingly found himself decidedly conflicted while campaigning.

McCellan's personal animosity toward Lincoln, well-known even when he served under Lincoln as Commander of the Army of the Potomac, was made scathingly public during the campaign. The War, which was supposed to be over within months of Ft Sumter being shelled in April of 1861, was, by the fall of 1864, well into its third, miserable year. On both sides, casualties were hideous! McClellan correctly pointed out that Lincoln's naive underestimation of Southern resolve was adolescent and amounted to little more than wishful thinking.

With monotonous regularity, Confederate Generals Bobbie Lee, Tom Jackson, and others had out-foxed, out-bluffed, and out-aggressed Lincoln's disappointing succession of generals, each fired in turn, as they brought Lincoln one military disappointment after another. The War thus waxed progressively unpopular, as did confidence in Lincoln and his Administration.

Surprisingly, Lincoln won reelection decisively! Sherman's highly-publicized Atlanta Campaign, the first unmitigated Union victory of the War, was just what the electorate had been waiting for! It instantly reversed public opinion and convinced a majority that this War was winnable after all, and must be won, definitively. Simultaneously, the Democrat's conflicted message proved fatal.

Five months later, in April of 1865, four years after it had begun, the War finally, mercifully ended at Appomattox, VA with an unconditional Union victory.

Two weeks later, Lincoln was assassinated.

McClellan spent three years in Europe after the War ended. When he returned, his interest in national politics, and the Democrat Party's interest in him, quickly and permanently faded away.

Had Sherman delayed, even momentarily, the 1864 election could easily have gone the other way, and the map of the United States would likely look a good deal different today!

Fairly defining executive challenges he faced, Lincoln said:

"I am regularly approached with the most opposite opinions imaginable, in all cases by religious men who are certain they represent The Devine Will... however, I suppose I myself need not expect any such direct, Devine Revelation... what is left for me to do is study the plain, physical facts, ascertain what is possible, and then determine what appears to be wise and right."

Put more succinctly by John S McCain Jr (father of Senator John McCain) nearly a hundred years later:

"Life is run by poker players, not systems analysts"

/John