The 272 best words in the English language: A big day in Gettysburg and a notable absence

I have been accused from time to time of being a tad wordy when it comes to my writing.

For instance, my Monday print column sometimes threatens to spill off the page. In this business, we call that a "jump." We frown on that around here. We like stories to start - and end - on the same page.

That's one of the reason I have always marvled at one of the great pieces of literature in the English language.

I was actually a speech, and it was delivered 150 years ago today.

Maybe you've heard of it, and the orator.

It was called the Gettysburg Address, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 19, 1863. Amidst the passion and overwhelming loss and grief embodied by the Gettysburg Battlefield at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln sought to reassure the nation of its noble calling.

It contains all of 272 words.

One hundred fifty years later, you might say the nation is again gripped in something of a civil war. Or, perhaps better stated, a most uncivil war.

It's called partisan politics. Instead of being contested by the blue and gray, this one is being waged by the blue and the red. Right vs. left. Democrats vs. Republicans. Political gridlock is the rule of the day in the nation's capital.

That's why I find it hard to believe that one person will be missing amid all the events commemorating the Gettysburg Address today. You can follow our live coverage of the events here.

The current commander-in-chief will not be there.

President Obama has rejected pleas to attend. Instead he will send a representative.

Shame on him. I don't know why Obama is not going to make it to those rolling hills in central Pennsylvania. Frankly, I don't care. I have heard a lot of reasons, including the fact that the congressman from that region voted with the Tea Party bloc in oppposing Obamacare and shutting down the government.

I don't care. That's not what this day is about.

It's about who we are as a nation, why this grand experiment was conceived, and the challenges ahead. It's a message that resonates just as easily now - although certainly for different reasons - as it did 150 years ago.

Of all people, you would think our president would be there.

I for one, am speechless when it comes to determining why he would turn his back on such a day.

Maybe these 272 words can provide some hint:

The Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.