Newsweek Compares Obama To Lincoln

In case folks don’t realize it yet, I’m an unabashed MedHead:

Fair to Compare Obama and Lincoln?
Michael Medved
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Does it make sense to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln?

In order to answer widespread objections to the Democratic nominee’s lack of leadership experience, his supporters have developed the annoying habit of citing the sainted sixteenth president as another titanic, world-shaking and divinely anointed figure who ascended to the presidency after few prior accomplishments in politics. According to this misleading analogy, Lincoln lacked an appropriately presidential resume, just as Obama does, and shocked the political establishment of his time in much the same way that today’s Democratic candidate threatens business-as-usual in Washington. True believers feel confident that the absence of qualifications for Barack will block his path to glory and greatness no more than Honest Abe’s shortage of pre-Presidential accomplishment kept him off Rushmore.

SUPERFICIAL SIMILARITIES

This argument relies on a few purportedly “haunting” resemblances between The One and the Rail Splitter —

· Both men came to Washington to represent the state of Illinois, though both were born and raised elsewhere (Lincoln in Kentucky and Indiana, Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia)

· As boys, the two future candidates yearned for absent parents—Lincoln for the kindly, illiterate mother who died when he was nine, and Obama for the self-destructive father who abandoned him when he was two

· They each worked as lawyers, and each served 8 years in the state legislature in Springfield

· They each expressed impassioned opposition to controversial wars (the Mexican War in Lincoln’s case, the Iraq War for Obama) at a time when most of their fellow citizens supported those conflicts

· They each lost races for the House of Representatives early in their careers (Lincoln in 1843, Obama in 2000)

· Both men became nationally famous on the strength of one eloquent and celebrated speech — Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech of January, 1858, and Obama’s Keynote Address at the Democratic Convention of 2004.

· They both ran for President with a bare minimum of Washington experience (Lincoln had served only two years in the House and Obama announced his candidacy after serving only two years in the Senate).

· The two Illinoisans both qualify as skinny and tall – Lincoln was 6’4” and under 180 pounds; Obama is nearly 6’2” and about 160.

PROFOUND DIFFERENCES

While Obama’s acolytes love to cite their man’s superficial parallels with Lincoln they pointedly ignore the far more significant differences –contrasts that serve to highlight the truly unprecedented flimsiness of the current candidate’s qualifications..

Yes, it’s true that Obama has actually served more time in elective office than Lincoln before his Presidency– nearly 12 years for Barack to Abe’s 10 full years. But you can’t compare the depth or duration of their involvement in politics: Lincoln became a Presidential candidate 28 years after his first run for public office; Obama announced for the White House a mere twelve years after his debut candidacy for state legislature.

More importantly, Lincoln spent the better part of three decades deeply involved in party politics, working passionately for other candidates and causes even when not a candidate himself. At age 23, Honest Abe labored tirelessly to try to elect Henry Clay as president, and he toiled prominently in Clay’s two subsequent White House campaigns as well. In 1840, he traveled throughout the Midwest, stumping for William Henry Harrison for President and stood as a Harrison elector. In 1848, he ardently backed Zachary Taylor for President and traveled more than a thousand miles (including visits to Massachusetts and Maryland) to campaign in his ultimately successful race. As a loyal Whig, he played an influential role in dozens of local and statewide races, winning respect as a sagacious, wily electoral operator.

In contrast, Barack Obama played no significant role in any political campaign until he became a candidate himself at age 35. Unlike most budding politicians, his student years at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard provide no evidence of enthusiastic involvement in the partisan battles that raged throughout the era, no desire to do battle for Mondale-Ferraro, or Michael Dukakis, or Bill Clinton, or Al Gore. He did participate in a successful voter registration drive in 1992, but the only candidate who ever managed to inspire his personal commitment or dedication was himself.

Moreover, the young Obama never tried for a leadership role in his own party, as Lincoln did from the beginning of his career. After his arrival in the Illinois legislature in 1834 (at age 25) Abe became floor-leader for the Whig Party and chairman of the powerful finance committee. After leaving the U.S. Congress in 1848 (he faced a daunting fight for re-election), Lincoln received an offer of appointment as governor of the new Oregon Territory but turned it down because of his political ambitions in fast-growing Illinois. As the Whigs began to collapse over the slavery issue, Lincoln played a leading role in organizing the new Republican Party in Illinois. He returned briefly to the legislature in 1854, then ran for the U.S. Senate – withdrawing at the last moment before the legislature’s final vote for a new Senator in order to preserve party unity. He ran again for the Senate in 1858, challenging the nation’s most prominent and powerful Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, electrifying the public in every corner of the nation with their famous debates. By contrast, Barack Obama waged his one U.S. Senate campaign against a carpet-bagging embarrassment and fringe candidate (Alan Keyes) who took the Republican nomination after the formidable prior contender withdrew in a divorce-related sex scandal.

Aside from the vast differences in the scope of their political involvement, Lincoln and Obama followed sharply divergent paths in pursuit of their private sector careers. Obama chose to devote himself principally to the non-profit world: spending years as a community organizer, lecturer at the University of Chicago, and civil rights lawyer. Lincoln, taking a break from full-time politics in 1849, aggressively built up his reputation and personal wealth as a business lawyer, particularly for railroads. He handled more than 5,000 cases, and became known as one of the top corporate attorneys in the state, if not the nation.

Lincoln also compiled another experience that Obama never approached. In 1832, he responded to the governor’s call for volunteers and enlisted in the militia to battle a bloody Indian threat in the Black Hawk War. He quickly won election as captain of a company of volunteers, and years later said he “cherished that honor…more than nomination for the presidency.” Though he never experienced a major battle in his ninety days of service, Captain Lincoln learned the responsibilities of command and the need for quick decisions and adaptability in dangerous situations.

Finally, Lincoln displayed admirable consistency in his approach to the issues of the day throughout his political and business career. He remained a proud American nationalist determined to strengthen the union, as well as a dedicated foe of the extension of slavery. He pursued these goals relentlessly on the state and national level and the same commitments, obviously, animated his eventful presidency.

Obama’s career, on the other hand, shows no evidence of long-term engagement with particular issues or even broad aims. Hillary Clinton could boast of her leadership for more than sixteen years in efforts to reform the health insurance system but Obama (beyond eloquent backing for a deliberately vague concept of “racial justice”) can point to no lodestars that guided him in his wanderings and adventures, no national controversies that consistently engaged his attention. The backtracking, revisions and gauzy evasions characterizing the nineteen months of his presidential campaign look anything but Lincolnian in terms of predictability.

In short, the dramatic contrasts with Lincoln reveal far more about Obama than do the strained efforts to recast him in the sixteenth president’s image. At the time he announced his presidential candidacy, Obama remained so little known, so novel and exotic and unprecedented, that his campaign itself claimed to deliver some sort of radical change. Lincoln, on the other hand, had become such a familiar fixture (and fixer) in American politics by the time he ran for president that his campaign took on a reassuring, well-worn aura: they called him “Old Abe” despite his relatively youthful age of 51. No contemporaries questioned Lincoln’s candidacy on the basis of lack of experience while all impartial observers of the contemporary season note Obama’s absence of preparation for the world’s most challenging job.

Today, of course, Old Abe’s immortal words and deeds remain so compelling and fresh that even 143 years after his death, they seem perpetually young. For Obama, on the other, the gimmicks and platitudes (“We are the ones we have been waiting for!”) that seemed so fresh and vital a year ago have already begun to wear out their welcome and seem increasingly stale, tarnished, tired – and old.

This part of the Newsweek article turns my stomach ill:

To a public thoroughly sick of partisan bickering, these words rang with hope as Obama spoke them on election night before a vast crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park. If there was any one message that defined the Obama campaign from the beginning, it was his promise to rise above the petty politics of division and unite the country.

Obama successfully created the persona and facade of someone who rose above partisan division and someone who reached across the aisle. Yet from the beginning, he engaged in negative attacks yet wasn’t called on it. His 100 years charge against McCain, tying him to Bush, claiming “let’s talk about the issues”, then proceeds to talk about Bush and 8 years of failure (am I supposed to unite behind that message? Is that supposed to make us “come together”?), “get in their face”, pulling out the race card, bitter folk clinging to their guns and religion.

Actually, the Newsweek comparison is such a stretch, I can draw correlation between its points on Lincoln, to Bush:

During the Civil War, Lincoln was able to brilliantly manage his team of rivals. His secretary of state, William Seward, came into office thinking “he would actually be controlling Lincoln,” notes Goodwin, but Lincoln was able to sit Seward down, remind him who was president—and ultimately make him his close friend.

Note Bush picking one of the most over-qualified vice presidents in history whose counsel he respected and wanted, but from accounts I’ve read (aside from that of BDSers) Bush was always in the driver’s seat- not Cheney.

Lincoln surrounded himself with advisers who were better educated and more experienced and who made no secret of coveting Lincoln’s job. Obama has yet to announce his cabinet, but he is clearly looking at some strong personalities, such as Larry Summers at Treasury, and he is considering keeping on Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates.

Note that Bush, in the spirit of “bipartisanship”, kept Clinton holdovers such as George Tenet. Same as how he governed Texas, which is why he thought he could be a “uniter and not a divider”. It was partisan Democrats who sabotaged Bush’s attempts at setting aside partisan differences. Note his graciousness toward Pelosi during the 2006 election loss and his graciousness and class in helping the transition process be as smooth as possible for the sake of the county.

The most important quality may be humility, which both Obama and Lincoln repeatedly refer to as an essential virtue. Humility in this case is not to be confused with meekness or passivity. Rather, it comes from confidence.

Sounds like Bush.

Bush’s circumstances have similarities every bit as much as trying to draw correlations with Obama and Lincoln:

As with the late Lincoln, so with the present Bush — once the right general was found and the right strategy adopted, victory became possible and a beleaguered president’s fortunes were restored. Doubtless President Bush is aware of the parallel, and, perchance, he will avoid Ford’s Theatre.

A curious inhibition shared by both Bush ’41 and Bush ’43 is to downplay their interest in reading. Actually both are hearty readers, certainly as compared with the general public.

Earlier this year I attended a luncheon that the president hosted at the White House for the distinguished British historian Andrew Roberts, whose 736-page volume, “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900,” the president had polished off months ago, even before the book was released in America. He had been talking up the book to his staff, and when I heard that my friend, Mr. Roberts, was going to be in town, I passed that intelligence on. Mr. Bush invited Mr. Roberts in, not only for lunch but also to lecture the White House staff. This president knows his history and its significance.

Through the last three years of gloomy news he has been called “bull-headed,” but the evidence from Iraq, the economy, and various other precincts, for instance, advances in stem-cell research, suggests a different adjective, to wit, “resolute.” Moreover, in Iraq we see not only a resolute president but also a flexible president. Last spring, he changed his tactics in Iraq and the change has been successful.

Historians studying Lincoln’s war have concluded that the gravest challenge facing him was to find an effective general. In fact, one of the most authoritative early series written about the war was titled “Lincoln Finds a General,” by Kenneth Williams.

From the successful way things are going in the Iraq War today, it is clear that Mr. Bush has found his general, David Petraeus, and that this general has implemented a strategy effective across an array of problems that had heretofore made a hash of our post-invasion presence in Iraq.

General Petraeus’s “surge” has pacified once violent neighborhoods and effected, in the provinces, alliances with otherwise warlike sheiks who have turned on Al Qaeda’s brutes and apparently beaten them. The surge has even suppressed incoming weapons from Iran.

And now Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who in July called the surge a “failed policy” and the president “delusional,” has returned from the battlefield and admitted that the “surge is working.”

The economy is strong with steady growth, low unemployment, low inflation, low interest rates, and only one sector in doubt, housing, which in an economy as enormous as ours can be endured for a while. If there is a doubt on the economy, it arises only from the threat of the Democrats.

The president’s reluctance to fund federal research on embryonic stem cells has been vindicated with the announcement that scientists have discovered how to use normal skin cells to serve their research purposes. And now comes a National Intelligence Estimate, concluding that Iran decided to abandon a 15-year program to develop nuclear weapons just months after our invasion of Iraq. At the time, Libya too gave up its nuclear arms program. What desert potentate wants to suffer the fate President Bush arranged for Saddam Hussein?

The nature of modern broadcasters and the present rancorous condition of partisan politics encourage a colossal din after a president undertakes daring endeavors. Today we forget the widespread contempt that surrounded President Truman’s last years in office as he contended with the Korean War and the early stages of the Cold War. Who remembers the sorry repute of Ronald Reagan a year before he vacated the premises? Former White House speechwriter Clark Judge, in one of the first newspaper columns to notice the Bush revival, wrote last week, “In 1987, President Reagan’s fortunes were down.” Mr. Judge noted the president’s loss of the Senate, the setback of the Bork nomination, and, of course, Iran-Contra. “But then,” Mr. Judge recalls, “the Soviets started to give way on arms and other agreements, the economy continued to grow despite the October stock market crash and Reagan began the long climb in the polls that helped put the current president’s father in the Oval Office.” Well, maybe the present president’s “long climb” has begun. From a lowly 29% approval rating in September, when General Petraeus was testifying before Congress on the surge, Mr. Bush’s approval has climbed to 36%. The Democratic Congress’s approval is but 22% and its leadership has undertaken no daring endeavors.

When President Bush finally retires to his ranch to continue his readings of history, quite possibly the books about contemporary Washington will make pleasant reading. Perhaps even a boulevard will be named after him in Baghdad.