Franklin buff Isaacson shares stories, modern perspective

Walter Isaacson thinks that if Ben Franklin were alive today, he would probably be pretty… Walter Isaacson thinks that if Ben Franklin were alive today, he would probably be pretty disappointed with the current state of American politics.

According to Isaacson, Franklin would be aghast at the divisiveness and partisanship created by a largely two-party system, as well as the lack of “pragmatic compromise” on issues that affect all Americans, regardless of class.

Isaacson, a former CEO of CNN News Group and author of the 2003 book “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,” gave his thoughts on the founding father from a spotlighted podium on stage in the Carnegie Museum Music Hall the night of Nov. 25.

Appearing as one of the Drue Heinz Lecture Series speakers, Isaacson told a crowd of 200 people that Franklin’s dedication to civic projects, such as the founding of America’s first lending libraries, inspired one of Pittsburgh’s own great civic philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie. Isaacson said that Carnegie held Franklin in such high esteem that he placed a statue of him outside his Downtown office.

Franklin’s way with words, however, was the key to creating his rise to prominence and establishing how we remember him today, Isaacson said.

In the 1720’s, Franklin wanted to join the Philadelphia chapter of the Freemasons, but was repeatedly denied membership. In response, Franklin used his Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper to publish a series of exposes revealing the secret codes and handshakes of the society until they eventually let him join. Franklin then published a series of retractions of his own articles.

Franklin’s annual Poor Richard’s Almanac, which credited authorship to the Franklin-penned title character, dispensed annual advice and information, with the promise that if the reader didn’t buy that year’s almanac, Richard’s wife would leave him.

“Franklin was the best writer of the colonial era – certainly the funniest,” Isaacson said. “He had a homespun, ‘cracker-barrel’ humor that poked fun at the elite that we see used by other great American storytellers like Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Garrison Keillor.”

With a lengthy resume as a scientist, inventor, diplomat, businessman, politician and prolific writer, Franklin was the “foremost American spokesman of the Age of Enlightenment,” according to Isaacson.

Friends often told the talented and accomplished Franklin that he lacked humility, causing Franklin to always strive for the “appearance of humility” to those around him and to his readers, Isaacson added.

When it came to politics, Isaacson noted, Franklin relied on this appearance of humility to help him take bold actions.

Franklin’s work as a diplomat played an essential role in getting France to join the American Revolutionary War. During his time in Europe, Franklin took to wearing a coonskin hat and philosophizing with French high society and government officials. According to Isaacson, this Franklin-created character of the “simple, backwoods philosopher” helped sway the French into action by appealing to basic moral values like opposing tyranny.

Franklin also managed to inject his personality into two of America’s most hallowed documents.

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence, now located in the basement of the Library of Congress and covered with Franklin’s editing and cross-outs, contains one change that strikes Isaacson as especially important.

In the original wording of a phrase – “we hold these truths to be sacred” – “sacred” was changed to “self-evident.” According to Isaacson, the change was Franklin’s way of ensuring the creation of “a government based on the consent of the governed, and not the dictate of any religion.”

As a delegate at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Franklin was 40 years older than the average age of the other attending delegates. According to Isaacson, though, Franklin’s personality was needed to bring a compromise between the competing interests drawing up the Constitution.

“You need the revered pedestal of a George Washington. You need the young thinkers like a Thomas Jefferson. You need the unbending and uncompromising character of a John Adams,” Isaacson said. “But you also need the practical and pragmatic common ground of a Ben Franklin to establish the basic values that I think we’ve lost in politics today,” Isaacson said.

The unanswered question of slavery created one of the great discrepancies in the creation of the U.S. Constitution. According to Isaacson, Franklin owned two slaves in his early life and allowed for the advertisement of slave auctions in his Pennsylvania Gazette.

Over the course of his long life, Franklin kept a “moral ledger,” where he balanced out his mistakes with his good acts, Isaacson said. Seeing his support of slavery as a “major blot” on his moral record, Franklin freed his slaves and later became head of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

On his deathbed, Franklin wrote a critical satire of slavery from the point of view of an Algerian pirate engaged in the white slave trade. He defended the practice on all the same basic moral and economic grounds that the supporters of the black slave trade used in America. American abolitionists later used the work as a major written argument against the practice, Isaacson said.

After his hour-long lecture, Isaacson took questions from the audience.

When one person asked what Franklin would have thought of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gives the American government increased domestic information-gathering and surveillance powers, Isaacson answered by giving a quote from one of Franklin’s Revolutionary-era writings.

“Those who would give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” Isaacson said.

When asked what he thought Franklin’s most important invention was, Isaacson answered that it was the creation of the “middle-class American persona” of Franklin himself.

He related the story of how, as a young printer, Franklin rolled carts of paper up and down Market Street in Philadelphia.

“Not because he had to,” Isaacson said, “but because he wanted people to see how industrious he was.”

Isaacson’s lecture, which was underwritten by PPG Industries Foundation, was the fifth in a fall series of six that will conclude Dec. 8 with crime fiction writer James Patterson.