The ghost of Abraham Lincoln looms large over the coming
inauguration of Barack Obama...or so they keep telling us. This
piece from Bloomberg is an interesting compendium of the
supposed symmetry between the 16th and 44th
presidents.
"Both of them were born to modest circumstances," says
former Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo, an amateur
Lincoln historian.
Obama's childhood, as the son of a single mother who sometimes
relied on food stamps, is a modern analogue of Lincoln's
log-cabin upbringing.
It's interesting to know that being the son of a single mother
who sometimes relied on food stamps is now analogous to being
reared in log cabins in the wilds of Kentucky and Indiana by an
uneducated farmer.
Spectator readers will probably also get a kick out of the last
paragraph:
"To the extent that he's emulating any president, Lincoln is
about as good as it's going to get," Wilentz says. "If he was
trying to emulate Calvin Coolidge, that would be a
problem."
Anyone uncomfortable with a trillion dollar "stimulus" might be
tempted to disagree.
In any case, it is worth pointing out that the portion of
Lincoln's inaugural trail Obama is copying was actually altered
at Allen Pinkerton's urging after rumors of plots to kill to soon
to be president sprouted. In the end, Lincoln, in his own words,
snuck into Washington"like a thief in the night." Hardly the
arrival Obama would want to emulate. Still, it is no surprise if
the president elect's advance team are unaware of this: Obama and
his presidential choreographers seem to struggle with the little
details of the glorious parts of U.S. history they so freely
appropriate.
