The Lincoln Platform

• Embrace what is new. Lincoln the modernizer wouldn’t have any patience for an economics born of nostalgia or of distrust of the workings of the market.
• Emphasize education. Lincoln talked of the importance of education from the first, although not with much specificity. He lived out his own commitment to it in his early years, with all his reading and self-directed study.
• Resist dependency. Lincoln resented his father for making him labor and keeping the proceeds for himself. He preached the gospel of work, and wanted as many people as possible participating in the commercial economy.
• Build infrastructure. Lincoln favored funding better transportation infrastructure, whether it was improving the pathetic little Sangamon River or building a grand railroad project spanning the continent.
• Fund other basic supports for growth. Lincoln lent aid to transportation improvements on the theory that they were transformative and couldn’t necessarily get the capital on their own otherwise. A direct analogue today is basic science and research.
• Reject class politics. The entire thrust of Lincoln’s economics was growing the pie for everyone and resisting zero-sum arguments positing an inherent conflict between classes. 
• Welcome immigrants.
• Exploit our resources. Lincoln would probably favor drilling, mining, and fracking to the utmost.
• Pay attention to the interests of the common worker. “Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man,” Lincoln said in 1861 on his way to Washington, “so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing. I am for that thing.” 
• Support causes of social renewal.
• Elevate the culture.
• Look to the founders. Lincoln’s attitude to the Founders bordered on the worshipful. He said of George Washington: “Washington is the mightiest name of earth---long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation.”

Source: Lincoln Unbound. How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—and How We Can Do It Again. (2013) by Rich Lowry.