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Opinion: Obama as Lincoln already? Some parallels, but let’s hold on

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He hasn’t even taken the oath yet, let alone put on his new tux. Although the inauguration is approaching.

Our colleague over at the Swamp, Frank James, has a magnificent item examining President-elect Barack Obama’s obvious fondness for and created parallels with another adopted son of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.

Different times, different parties, obviously. Lincoln was the very first president elected from the 6-year-old Republican Party and the first of six consecutive Republican chief executives. So great was Lincoln’s slavery-ending, Union-saving political legacy and tragedy that 13 of the next 16 presidents well into the next century were GOP members.

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Both Obama and Lincoln adopted Illinois as their home state. Both lawyers. Both familiar with Chicago politics. Both worked in Springfield, launched their campaigns from there. Lincoln had minimal pre-White House experience in the House, Obama in the Senate.

The whole ‘team of rivals’ business: Lincoln not only had a Cabinet of onetime Republican opponents but his first vice president was a Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin, one of the few Democrats who opposed slavery then. They didn’t get along, but the country didn’t need a Lincoln vice president until early in his second term.

And how perfectly appropriate that Obama’s grand election night celebration last month was held in Chicago’s Grant Park, named for Ulysses, another adopted Illinoisan who was Lincoln’s final, favorite and most successful Civil War general.

Obama has nominated three former rivals for his Cabinet and pretty much every single ex-Clintonite except Socks, who’s dying. As Wonkette points out in a hilarious media roundup, Obama’s also being likened to virtually all past presidents somehow.

Lincoln had a tragic personal life that shows so profoundly in his facial photographs, losing a ...

... young son, who in those days could die from a mere infected blister. Obama declined a touring series of Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with his opponent (yes, that was a Senate race but the idea is the same). Both men sound eloquent, though we have no Matthew Brady daguerreotype of Abe’s speechwriter groping a cardboard cutout of some woman when the victory telegram arrived.

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It’s ridiculous, of course, to compare anyone who hasn’t even taken the oath of office to probably the nation’s greatest president, certainly the one universally cited by politicians of all stripes.

But Frank gives us much else to think about here, and perhaps a cautionary warning for the new guy, who may be inadvertently inflating expectations beyond their ability to be delivered despite aides’ tepid efforts to tamp them down:

Obama really has a thing for Abraham Lincoln. The latest manifestation of what appears to be his Lincoln envy is the way Obama intends on arriving in Washington for his inaugural, by train via Philadelphia and Baltimore, just like Lincoln. There’s been no mention of whether the president-elect will be wearing a stovepipe hat. Of course, Lincoln was sneaked through Baltimore because of credible reports of a conspiracy against his life. As we have seen since then, the protection afforded a president has so improved that a U.S. president can even go into hostile territory as President Bush just did when he went to Iraq and, given the right preparations, be safeguarded from most threats except perhaps a pair of Size 9 shoes. In Obama Cabinet appointments, there has been the whole Lincolnesque ‘team of rivals’ theme and Obama has returned to the Lincoln language repeatedly, saying we must ‘think anew’ and ‘act anew.’ For us Lincolnphiles, the attachment is understandable. Lincoln was the gold standard for presidents. For Obama, who adopted Lincoln’s Illinois as his home state, who worked in Lincoln’s Springfield and who has that special feeling (dare I call it love?) for Lincoln possessed by so many African Americans down to present day, it would be hard not to feel a deep connection to Father Abraham.

For the rest of Frank’s thoughtful piece, and the warning about expectations, click here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

No doubt Lincoln would have clicked here to register here for cellphone alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we’re on Amazon’s Kindle too. All bipartisan.

Lincoln’s second inaugural address -- he’s in the center, holding his remarks -- March 4, 1865, at the Capitol, about six weeks before his assassination.

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Credit: General Photographic Agency / Getty Images. Obama in stovepipe hat by Wonkette.

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