Gluckschmerz- or delight in the misfortune of others

We have all heard of schaudenfraude - or delight in the misfortune of others- but few of us have heard of Gluckschmerz.  Gluckschmerz means the unhappiness one feels due to the success of others. We move from enjoying the suffering of others to the loathsome feelings we have for ourselves when others succeed. An example of gluckschmerz which comes to mind almost immediately is the “beauty queen syndrome.” A pretty girl wins some beauty pageant, and then the girls cry, “Oh Lord, why can’t I look like her.” They cannot seem to find a way to be happy for the girl who won the most recent pageant, but instead, it makes them unhappy to see the other girl win. Perhaps Gore Vidal captures it best in his aphorism:  "Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies." Most pundits of the modern era seem to wallow in Gluckschmerz especially when talking about politicians.

Very few politicians have been as heavily criticized as President Obama. His ancestory  has been challenged, his intelligence questioned, his integrity  called into question, his appearance and ears derided. It seems the right wing press in the US can find nothing good in their president. Yet should this really surprise us? Obama is the first black president of the US in a country that is over three fourths white and which is still recovering from the stain of slavery. So to have a black president is for many, a cup too bitter to swallow or even sip. Success it seems has always bred jealousy and resentment...

In a book Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008), Michael Burlingame, the professor of Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, demonstrates how Lincoln was attacked viciously by his contemporaries and that in terms which make the present attacks on Obama look tame. By nearly any measure—personal, political, even literary—Abraham Lincoln set a standard of success that few in history can match, but in his lifetime the bile poured on him from every quarter. His ancestry was routinely impugned, his lack of formal learning ridiculed, his appearance maligned, and his morality assailed.

His sure-footed leadership during this country’s most-difficult days was accompanied by a fair amount of praise, but also by a steady stream of abuse—in editorials, speeches, journals, and private letters—from those on his own side, those dedicated to the very causes he so ably championed. George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York lawyer and diarist, wrote that Lincoln was “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla.” Henry Ward Beecher rebuked him for his lack of refinement and called him “an unshapely man.” Other Northern newspapers openly called for his assassination long before John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan.

Lincoln ended American slavery yet Elizabeth Cady Stanton called Lincoln “Dishonest Abe”and bemoaned the “incapacity and rottenness” of his administration, worked to deny him renomination, and swore that if he “is reelected I shall immediately leave the country for the Fijee Islands.” In the days after Lincoln’s assassination, William Lloyd Garrison Jr. called the murder “providential” because it meant Vice President Andrew Johnson would assume leadership.

Lincoln masterfully led the North through the Civil War. Yet he was denounced for his leadership throughout. A Republican newspaper editor in Wisconsin wrote, “The President and the Cabinet,—as a whole,—are not equal to the occasion.” William P. Fessenden, the Maine Republican, called Lincoln “weak as water.”

For anyone who struggles to do well; to be honest, wise, eloquent, and kind; to be dignified without being aloof; to be humble without being a pushover, who affords a better example than Lincoln? And yet the calumny he received in his own lifetime far surpasses anything that the right wing press has thrown at Obama.

Of course, Lincoln was elected twice to the presidency, and was revered by millions. History records more grief and mourning upon his death than for any other American president. But the past gets simplified in our memory, in our textbooks, and in our popular culture. This process of distillation obscures how Lincoln was perceived in his own time, and, by comparison, it diminishes our own age. Where is the political giant of our era? Where is the timeless oratory? Where is the bold resolve, the moral courage, the vision? Now imagine all those critical voices from the 19th century as talking heads on cable television today. Imagine the snap judgments, the slurs and put-downs that beset Lincoln magnified a million times over on social media. How many of us, in that din, would be able to keep an even keel and provide balanced judgement? 

His story illustrates that even greatness—let alone humbler qualities like skill, decency, good judgment, and courage—rarely goes unpunished. It is a lesson that Obama and his team need to absorb and learn from.