I’ve been enjoying a book on Abraham Lincoln from the hands of Brian Lamb and the good folks at C-Span. Called simply “Abraham Lincoln,” the book is a collection of brief chapters from various authors/historians on the 16th president.

This Friday morning, waiting in my doctor’s office for my periodic post-cancer checkup (“You’re fine. Come back in 6 months”), I came across insights about two men near Lincoln, both making similar points.

General George McClellan was put in charge of the Union forces early in the Civil War. Allen C. Guelzo writes that McClellan was an outstanding general in many ways. “He built a wonderful army. He was a great organizer, a tremendously talented engineer. If management consultants had existed in 1860, his was the resume that every management consultant in the country would take as an example.”

“There was only one problem,” Professor Guelzo writes. “(McClellan) didn’t like to fight, which is a strange thing for a general.”

A fatal flaw, I call it. It’s what caused Lincoln to sack him. McClellan did not seem to realize that the whole point of building a great army was to engage the enemy. Guelzo adds, “He might have been a genius, but he was not a genius for achieving victory.”

A little later in the book, historian David Herbert Donald writes about Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Donald calls him handsome, arrogant, widely admired, and thoroughly disliked by most of his contemporaries. Chase, he writes, was insatiably ambitious. To his thinking, he should have been president instead of Lincoln. After Lincoln’s death, Chase, by then chief justice of the Supreme Court, administered the oath of office to Andrew Johnson whom he detested. Donald imagines Chase thinking to himself, “I should be sitting in that chair instead of him.”

Abraham Lincoln was under no illusions about Mr. Chase. In fact, Lincoln once said of Chase that ambition was like a little worm eating away in him, just like in an ear of corn.

The fatal flaw in Salmon P. Chase was his all-consuming ambition to be president.

Most of us who have lived for any time upon this sod have encountered people with great talents and impressive abilities who are undone by some fatal flaw.

(At this juncture in the article, I began listing people in politics who had great futures until their libido ensnared them. The list was so long and depressing, however, I decided to skip it altogether. You understand, I’m sure.)

The Apostle Paul mentioned a friend and co-worker named Demas. The last mention of the brother, however, mourns his departure with this ominous note: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” (II Timothy 4:10)

Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, loved money. It was that simple. (John 12:6 and Luke 22:5)

King David’s future was as high as the sky until his undealt-with sex drive caught up with him and his overpowering ego did him in.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24 NKJV)

The irony is this psalm is from the hand of David. Was it written (and sung) before or after his great fall? If before, we simply say, “He started well, but should have kept it up.” And if after, we say, “He learned this lesson the hard way.”

None of us have arrived yet (Philippians 3:12). We are all still living and working in mortal bodies, in “houses of clay.” The best of us are capable of the worst of deeds. So, let us continually keep ourselves close to the Lord, encourage one another in all holiness, and stay humble before Him.