For crying out loud.
‘Fiscal cliff’ meeting at White House: Will it be ‘Lincoln’ moment for Obama?
Many Senate Republicans say that with Congress deadlocked on averting the fiscal cliff, it is up to Obama to force a deal. The lesson from the movie ‘Lincoln,’ they say, is ‘the president has to lead.’
Obama’s Lincoln Legacy
The predecessor that President Barack Obama most often channels is Abraham Lincoln.
Despite obvious differences — Lincoln was a Republican and was born more than 150 years before Obama — there are striking similarities. They are the only two presidents from Illinois, though neither was born there.
As the historian Garry Wills said when Obama was first elected president: “Both came onto the national stage as an outsider, without the customary credentials and connections of national politics.”
Lauren Thompson at Newsbusters has chronicled the media’s contrived notions of Obama = Lincoln:
In the run-up to Obama’s re-election and in the weeks since, as the movie “Lincoln,” opened, the media have hyped similarities between the two presidents. It’s helpful to them that the film is a product of high-profile liberal Steven Spielberg and associated with Participant Media, the same lefty company that produced Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”
On NPR on Nov. 30, sparring with the New York Times’ David Brooks over the “fiscal cliff,” E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post compared Obama’s zealous insistence on raising taxes to Lincoln’s abolitionism. When Brooks offered the “Lincoln” movie’s depiction of effective presidential negotiations, Dionne wasn’t having it. “Lincoln stood his ground on the fundamental principle that we needed the 13th Amendment and needed to ban slavery,” he said. “In fact, he was willing to have a Civil War on that question …”
MSNBC has particularly run with the theme. NBC Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman likened Obama to the Lincoln Memorial. “What Barack Obama was saying is, I was elected on the idea of hope. I was elected as a symbol, just like the statue of Abraham Lincoln on the Mall,” Fineman said.
MSNBC commentator and profession rabble-rouser Al Sharpton amped up his praise for Obama and offered more negative rhetoric toward conservatives.
On the Nov. 8 broadcast of “Politics Nation,” Sharpton gushed, “Becoming the 44th president of the United States or even the first African-American president to hold the post has never been enough for Barack Obama. He spoke unabashedly of becoming one of the greatest presidents, a transformative figure like Abraham Lincoln.”
It makes a certain amount of sense, considering that a few days earlier, Sharpton had compared the Republican party to Confederate slave owners. But MSNBC has never missed an opportunity to associate today’s conservative movement with the Confederacy, secession, slavery and racism in the past.
Sharpton and MSNBC guest Ana Maria Cox belittled Republicans over state voter ID laws. “Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863,” Sharpton said. “This is 2012. Somebody might want to tell them to find some Republicans at least this century. Maybe last century. This is ridiculous.”
Enough.
I guess when Obama has no real accomplishments of his own, the media finds it must associate him with a consequential historical figure in the hopes that some of the shine will rub off on him.
Lauren Thompson gets it exactly right:
One was a self-educated rail-splitter and circuit lawyer in humble frontier towns. The other is an Ivy League-educated radical who only ventured out from his comfortable Hyde Park digs for some day work stirring up trouble as a “community organizer.”
This is yet another example of the propaganda reminiscent of the heady old days of the Cold War and the USSR and what is currently produced in places like Venezuela and North Korea to glorify Dear Leader and validate his position. It’s bullshit. Obama isn’t remotely like Lincoln – he is the antithesis of Lincoln. If there is a parallel to be drawn it is more accurate to compare him to Woodrow Wilson…Wilson was a lawyer who never held a real job outside academia and politics – just like Obama.
Obama clearly exhibits the same disdain for the Constitution that Wilson did. Obama shows the same distaste for dissent that Wilson did when Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress anti-British, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. Obama only wishes that he could round up his opposition like Wilson did in the Palmer Raids.
Lest we forget, Lincoln was president as the Civil War raged, when an advancing army was within a cannon shot of Washington and had driven all the way into Pennsylvania.
Perhaps the media is foretelling the future.
While the rest of the nation views Barack Obama has the first Black President, one holds out that he is not the first black president …. when it is opportunistic to do so of course, Greg.
And I think the ace in the hole that Obama is waiting to play is the 14th Amendment. I sincerely believe he will call upon it in some twisted form of a power grab should these politicians remain unable to reach a bargain.
We live in the scary times (as we have in the past) because of the efforts of the Free Sh*t Army.
Let us also not forget that Lincoln helped SAVE the country from division… Obama only saves himself by dividing.
Like a Grand Canyon of separation!
Let us point out that Lincoln was the man who KILLED THE CONSTITUTION!
When we credit him with “saving” this nation, we credit him with placing the union above the ideals and principles upon which it was founded. The South had a right to secede; the North had NO authority to force the South to stay in the union. The founders were very clear about this, yet, somehow, Lincoln managed to find powers in the Constitution that do not exist (or he just said to hell with the Constitution all together). How very…”Progressive” of Lincoln.
I do not consider Lincoln a ‘hero,’ no more than I consider Obama to be one. BOTH MEN betrayed the spirit of this nation.
Thank you, B.
Kells,
Did I say something you didn’t like — again? Or is that a “real” ty? hard to tell between us you know😉
Au contraire, mon chere; me likey. My oldest son is a Civil War buff, so I have read, um, a few books on this. I really wish I could do a book swap with you.
Anytime — so long as we swap back. I’m found of every “friend” in my library, but I do not mind sharing them — from time to time.
I never re-read a book, unless by accident (yes, that has happened on more than one occasion.) which is probably not a good thing as I seem to have a memory that only applies itself in another’s skin. I shall exchange books with you, silly B. I can gather up some and take them to your brother (if he does not mind being the middle man.) I would imagine he shall be closed until Wednesday. Now I’ve already forgotten where he relocated his business…. I’ll look it up.
LOL, my brother may be a bad go-between. At the moment, he refuses to acknowledge my existence (and you thought I only had this effect on you🙂 )
Well, then, you could meet one of my sisters. I’m quite sure it would be a day you won’t soon forget. I in turn shall speak to your brother on your behalf.
You let me know how that goes for you🙂
I’ll take him for a drive… I say, do you know Don Arias?
This revisionist history that the civil war was about slavery is just that; revisionist and LIES.
The civil war was about the industrial north forcing upon the agrarian south federal policies which accelerated the bankruptcy of the south while enriching the industrialized north at the expense of the south.
The southern leaders were discussing freeing the slaves: first- France would come to the souths aid upon doing so and second; slavery was financially untenable, and southerners understood that. They just didn’t know what to do with the people who were slaves once they were freed.
Some opine:
Lincoln merely went forward “UN-constitutionally” by the way, to head off the south in order to foreclose France’s help.
The “civil war” was really about the “central government” forcing it’s will upon all the people’s of where half were claiming their STATES’ RIGHTS as enshrined in the Constitution of 1789.
Anyone seeing any parallels ?
Yep.