Abraham Lincoln, President of – the Community Association?

Update: I recently talked about this article on community association radio show Where You Live. The show can be heard or down loaded here.

The Presidency

President of the Neighborhood Homeowners Association. President of the Condominium. The President of the United States of America.

One of these things is not like the other. Or is it? The title is the same. The election process and democratic nature are…. similar? Perhaps there is something to be learned from what makes a successful US President, and we can apply that lesson to achieve success as community association president.

Which presidents, then, are most successful, and what qualities made them so? Washington – an aristocratic landowner and statesman. Only a select few command the respect and deference that he brought to the table. Andrew Jackson – man of the people. His love of the spoils system would not play well in the association context. Teddy Roosevelt – carry a big stick. Erecting a bully pulpit in the condo hallway probably will not have the same gravitas as it did for him. Kennedy – Charismatic and ambitious. “Ask not what your condo can do for you” will probably not make your unit owners very happy though. Reagan – It may be morning in America again. But trickle-down economics do not work in the condo budget.

The Great Emancipator

What about Abraham Lincoln? Our sixteenth president is often reduced to a quick fact sheet. We celebrate his birthday (kind of), we know about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and perhaps the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. He was shot at Ford’s Theater by… well, you know.

But the more you fill in the picture about Lincoln, the more it becomes clear that he was that rare breed of leader: thoughtful, humble, selfless, visionary, and dedicated. What did Lincoln do that made him such an excellent role model for community association presidents even today?

Preserve the Union

Lincoln is often remembered, and praised, for “winning the Civil War,” or “ending slavery,” or occasionally “defeating the Confederacy.” Yet, if you look a bit deeper at the man himself, he never set out to do any of those things. As he took office amidst secession and strife, and as as the war dragged on and the nation threatened to tear itself apart, Lincoln though of only one thing: “preserving the Union.” Lincoln wrote this extraordinary paragraph in a letter to Horace Greeley in 1862. Greeley was criticizing the direction the country was taking during the war and how Lincoln was responding (can any Association president relate?), and Lincoln said in response:

As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. I

f I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862

I find this admirable. He has identified the thing that he is responsible for as President, and has dedicated himself to preserving it, no matter what it takes from him personally. The truly remarkable part here is the great lengths to which he went to do exactly this. As the war waged on, and critiques raged, and soldiers died, this duty only weighed on Lincoln more greatly. I picture him sometimes, sitting alone in the Executive Mansion (it wasn’t yet called the White House) and reading reports of the war. Thinking of the options he had available to him, and the long road confronting the nation, and what he was committing to. The strain on him must have been constant, heavy, draining, even staggering. But he remained true to his “purpose according to my view of official duty,” despite what was still to come.

As the head of the Association, the President is called upon to exercise this same selfless and unifying view. You are a fiduciary to the entire Association, and you are duty-bound and obligated to take the actions that are in the best interests of the entire Association, though they may cause strife or be unpopular. (Note: A community association is not the Union, to be preserved at all costs, and the action in the best interests of the Association may well be in certain cases to explore dissolution of it. But even in that action the President should do the right thing for the Association membership, regardless of outspoken critics or short-term consequences.)

Put Your Personal Beliefs Aside

Lincoln himself believed that slavery should be abolished. That was his personal stance, arrived at after years of thought, reflection, education, and service. But even though he was elected President of the United States, he STILL was not so bold as to impose that belief upon the country. Think about that for a second. Imagine the presidents over the years, or even presidential candidates, saying what they believed, and yet remaining so humble, placing themselves so in service of the country, that they refused to impose their own belief system upon the nation.

Jefferson believed in the autonomy of the states. FDR wanted to get the country working. Clinton believed in free trade. Bernie Sanders wants to impose socialism, Elizabeth Warren wants to forgive student loans, and Trump wants to build a wall. These are things that each person believes, and they wear them as a badge of honor. They hold them out as qualifications for the job. They say “elect me because I want to do this.”

Not so with Abraham Lincoln. The man was so remarkably humble, so taken with his duty and dedicated to his role, that even though he was staunchly against slavery, he did not use the power of the Presidency to do something according to his personal belief. Just look again at the last line of that letter quoted above. Go ahead; I’ll wait….

He says it right there to Greeley. Everyone should be free. But that is not my call right now. Here is a portion of a letter he wrote summarizing how he felt about his role:

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways.

And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it…

Letter to Albert G. Hodges

Even though he believed in freeing the slaves right from the outset, he separated that belief from his oath, from his obligated to the Constitution. Just imagine a candidate, or even a sitting president, getting up today and saying: “I believe personally in this critical essential issue that is vital to the nation as a whole, but I will not do it because it is beyond my power.” I think of him again, agonizing at night, and in meetings, and struggling with this dichotomy within himself – his own beliefs and personal code, weighed against the oath of office and his obligations to the Union.

An Association president is often called upon to do the same: to separate personal belief from official obligation. Do you think airbnb is a valid way to make money, but your documents prohibit it? Then do not “break the oath in using the power” you have been entrusted with; enforce the documents. Do you believe that emotional support animals should be prohibited? Well you may advocate for that on your own time, but as association president you are obligated to follow federal law on the subject. In short, as president, you have to put on your association president hat – it can be a stovepipe hat – and do what your office commands, not what your heart desires.

Admit Your Mistakes

The hallmark of poor association governance can often be what the Board does when it gets something wrong. Often a board will make a mistake – they are human! But where the issue really becomes problematic is when they double-down on that mistake and continue in the same course of action. When something has been shown to you to be wrong, as the president, you are obligated to take the lead, change course, and make it right. Lincoln and Grant, upon first discussing the siege of Vicksburg, disagreed on strategy. After Grant proceeded in the fashion he had proposed, and was successful, Lincoln wrote to him:

When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did — march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

Letter to Grant, July 1863

He also called it “one of the most brilliant campaigns in the world.” A legal colleague from Illinois commented later: “It required no effort on his part to admit another man’s superiority, and his admission that General Grant was right and he was wrong about operations in Vicksburg was not intended for effect as some suppose but was perfectly in character.”

How many association boards will be flawless in their decisionmaking? Zero. The truly great ones, and the ones who will succeed and flourish and enhance their community, will be quick to admit to errors, and to acknowledge the success and accomplishments of others. It has been said by others wiser than I am that “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Don’t be stupid.

Appoint a Great Cabinet

Okay, you say, this tortured metaphor has finally gone too far. An association president does not appoint a cabinet!

True. But the lessons to be taken from Lincoln’s appointment of a cabinet can be applied to the association context as well. President Lincoln famously assembled a “Team of Rivals” around him consisting of political opponents, detractors, and generally strong intelligent advisors, whether or not they agreed with him:

His explanation at the time was that these were the strongest men in the country. He declared that at a time of peril, the country needed to have the strongest men, and that he couldn’t deprive it of those talents.

At the same time, Lincoln was facing a Republican Party that was very young and whose members had come from a variety of other parties. They were former Whigs, former Democrats. By putting his rivals in his cabinet, he had access to a wide range of opinions, which he realized would sharpen his own thinking. It also gave him a way of keeping all those conflicting opinions together. If he didn’t have a unified group fighting against the South, the fight would be impossible to sustain. So having all those opinions in his cabinet not only helped him; it helped the country as well.

It was very like Lincoln: He was taking the long view, but he was also thinking of himself, and both of those things came together. But it took an enormous amount of self-confidence. What he did was unprecedented at that time. The idea was that you should appoint people who think the way you do.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Extraordinary as usual for Abraham Lincoln. Bold. Selfless. Ahead of his time. Humble. Confident. For just how bold and confident of a strategy this really was, read more.

… and a great example for an association president. Do not surround yourself with like-minded people (at least on purpose). Invite discourse. Do you have an outspoken member who emails the board and shows up at meetings to complain? Invite them to join the Board. Are there complaints in the neighborhood about a certain portion of the responsibilities that you have not had time for? Set up a committee to address it. Appoint the affected owners. Empower the people who disagree with you to make the change they want to see. Make sure you hold your open forum session during every meeting and encourage owners to attend. Recruit board members of different situations – residents, landlords, parents, twenty-somethings, male, female, pet owners, etc. Be confident in your leadership, and invite all the different viewpoints. Do not regard others as challengers; use them as resources.

Do What is Necessary

This is where we lose a lot of people. Up until now, we have said to govern well, fairly, justly, equitably, and deferentially. While those are hard to actually accomplish, they are generally agreed upon as satisfactory goals for the Association. But now the comparison to Lincoln will also bring us into controversial territory. In order to preserve the Union, which he believed to be his mandate as president (and for which history has rightly praised him), Lincoln had to engage in a Great Civil War. He had to send troops into the South to fight between families. The man had to preside over the bloodiest day in American history. And despite his genuine reluctance to do so, Lincoln waged that war until the end, until the Confederacy submitted.

Now, and I cannot stress this enough, I am NOT encouraging any association president to engage in civil war. However, there are times where the enforcement proceedings can get messy and expensive. There are times where doing battle with a nearby development or a government entity can become costly and defeating. There are instances when an association is forced to impose a special assessment or take out a loan to preserve its ability to go on. And while there may be outspoken opposition to these courses of action, if you and your well-constituted board have decided that they are in the best interests of the Association, then stay the course, and do not be dissuaded. Lincoln famously said: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” Let it be the same with your Association; do not go out and look for a fight, but take action necessary to end disputes quickly and fairly.

Grow a Beard

There is a remarkable story about 11-year-old Grace Bedell, who seems to be the inspiration behind Abraham Lincoln’s now iconic beard. Apparently she told him that “all ladies like whiskers,” and that she could get more of her family to vote for him if he grew a beard. And of course, people with beards are generally trustworthy.

(Note: This section is meant in jest. Appearance and facial hair actually have nothing to do with good governance).

Conclusion

Four score and seven years ago, you started reading this blog post. If you have made it this far, then perhaps you have picked up a tip or two about how to conduct yourself as president of the community association, or what to expect from your board president. Maybe you have just learned a little about the many challenges that your community board faces, or how to get a bit more involved in solving them. At the end of the day, it really all comes back down to one simple idea: “Be excellent to each other.”

Govern like Lincoln did, and perhaps government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from your association.