His Great Mission

... His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined...

-- From Frederick Douglass' "Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln"

Nobody ever gets Superman on a unicorn.

All we ever get are deeply flawed humans to whom we assign an impossible job.

Bur after history has moved on a step or two, sometimes we are wise enough to notice that occasionally we manage to put the right, flawed human into the right, impossible job at just the right time.