Overrating Obama
Jonah Goldberg:
Few people remember now that the secessionist big concern was whether slavery would be permitted in the new territories that were seeking statehood. Lost to history is the fact that many who opposed slavery in the new states did so because of their racial prejudice against blacks being allowed there more than their objection to slavery.
Even worse was the reasoning of the secessionist who by their very act of leaving the union guaranteed there would be no slavery in the territories and ultimately that there would be none in the slave states either. It would have been almost impossible to ban it in the slave states were it not for the Civil War which the south started by attempting to withdraw from the union. It was one of the more politically inept moves in history, and it was done mainly by Democrats.
Beyond freeing the slaves, the winners had not a clue what to do with them after they were free. To some extent the share cropping system bailed them out, but that was not a plan devised by the government, but a system for survival that southern land owners and former slaves devised on their on. And, it still took another 100 years to guarantee civil rights and voting rights.
The fact is that Lincoln had to bring us together at the point of a gun. Is that really what the Obamaites think we need? Should not one Civil War should be enough for all of us. I would also note that Lincoln's cabinet was not that great either.
In an attempt to dial down expectations for his administration, President-elect Barack Obama’s supporters have dropped much of the “messiah” talk.Lincoln did fight to preserve the union, but he did not do it particularly well and came close to losing to a much poorer section of the country which had few of the advantages he had. Look, we all won the Civil War and both sides are better off now. But there was rank stupidity on both sides of the war and the current crop of liberals would be all over Lincoln and his team for failing to win the peace.
No more talk of him being The One (Oprah), or a Jedi Knight (George Lucas), or a “Lightworker” (the San Francisco Chronicle), or a “quantum leap in American consciousness” (Deepak Chopra). Instead we have more humble and circumspect conversation about the man. Now he’s merely Abraham Lincoln and FDR and Martin Luther King, combined.
It’s a step down from divine redeemer, but you have to start somewhere.
Newsweek, Time, the Washington Post, 60 Minutes and, of course, The O Network (formerly known as MSNBC) have all run wild with this stuff. Depicting Obama as FDR or Lincoln has become a staple of the self-proclaimed “objective” media.
I was on Fox News the other night to throw some cold water on this Obama-as-Lincoln stuff. Alan Colmes of Hannity & Colmes chastised me, asking if we shouldn’t give Obama “a chance to actually spread his wings and fly a little bit” before disparaging him.
Fine. I actually agree with that. Conservatives should not denounce Obama’s performance before he’s had a chance to, you know, perform.
But, shouldn’t we also hold off on comparing the guy to FDR and Lincoln before he’s done anything?
Obama hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet, and it’s already an unfair right-wing attack to say that Obama isn’t on par with Lincoln and FDR. What’s next? Will it be slander to say Obama’s a carbon-based life form? Will the Secret Service investigate you if you’re overheard saying you think Obama’s merely “OK”?
While such sycophancy from the national press is lamentable, at this point it’s hardly news.
What I find fascinating, however, is not so much the Obama hagiography, but the burning desire for another FDR or Lincoln that underlies it.
According to the various Obama-as-Lincoln narratives, including those from the president-elect himself, Obama is a new Lincoln because he is a “uniter.” In several of his most famous speeches, Obama insinuates that he wants to bring the country together the way Honest Abe did. Newsweek and others tout his fondness for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, in which Goodwin argues that Lincoln displayed his political genius by inviting adversaries into his Cabinet.
There are real problems with this model; it didn’t work too well for Lincoln. Moreover, who looks at how Lincoln staffed his Cabinet as the defining feature of his presidency? Saying Obama is the next Lincoln because the two men share staffing styles is like saying George Bush is Thomas Jefferson because they both liked chicken soup. If I wear a pointy hat, can I call myself John Paul II?
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Few people remember now that the secessionist big concern was whether slavery would be permitted in the new territories that were seeking statehood. Lost to history is the fact that many who opposed slavery in the new states did so because of their racial prejudice against blacks being allowed there more than their objection to slavery.
Even worse was the reasoning of the secessionist who by their very act of leaving the union guaranteed there would be no slavery in the territories and ultimately that there would be none in the slave states either. It would have been almost impossible to ban it in the slave states were it not for the Civil War which the south started by attempting to withdraw from the union. It was one of the more politically inept moves in history, and it was done mainly by Democrats.
Beyond freeing the slaves, the winners had not a clue what to do with them after they were free. To some extent the share cropping system bailed them out, but that was not a plan devised by the government, but a system for survival that southern land owners and former slaves devised on their on. And, it still took another 100 years to guarantee civil rights and voting rights.
The fact is that Lincoln had to bring us together at the point of a gun. Is that really what the Obamaites think we need? Should not one Civil War should be enough for all of us. I would also note that Lincoln's cabinet was not that great either.
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