For the record, Lincoln was mostly a progressive; Obama is a reactionary on way too many issues, and not a very good one, I might add.
Lincoln's slavery issue was a 19th century equivalent of the failed health insurance system issue of today. With slavery, Lincoln's choice was to adopt the progressive agenda of freeing the slaves or to do almost nothing and allow the Union to be split and to allow the US to become in the long term a pariah state.
Fast forward to now, where Obama's choice is to adopt the progressive agenda of a fair and affordable health care system, or to do almost nothing (and literally nothing good) and allow hundreds of thousands to keep dying early and allow millions of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and homelessness incidents due to unpaid health care and health insurance bills to continue and to leave the economy unprotected from being crushed by health care costs.
Regardless of any rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, all of those bad things are going to continue under anything that Obama is thinking about signing.
Lincoln chose correctly, Obama is choosing incorrectly, although arguably it doesn't matter what he chooses. Because Obama is not even really President the way Lincoln was, because unlike in Lincoln's day, these days legislation is largely coming from the executive offices and boardrooms of corporations, not from Congress and the President.
Thank goodness we don't have slaves depending on Obama to get them freed, because it doesn't seem that he could possibly do it.
A RESPONSE:
Kay Johnson August 16th, 2009 1:20 pm
Didn't Obama, himself, offer the illusion, from the beginning of his campaign, that he was another Lincoln? He kicked off his campaign at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, IL.
Back in May 2008 at Boca Raton, Florida, Barack Obama made this statement:
“I can tell you this. My goal is to have the best possible government. And that means me winning. So, I’m very practical in my thinking. I’m a practical guy. One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Awhile back, there was a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called ‘Team of Rivals,’ in which she talked about how Lincoln basically pulled all the people he’d been running against into his Cabinet. Because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was, ‘How can we get the country through this time of crisis?’ I think that has to be the approach one takes to the vice president and the Cabinet.”
From the beginning, Obama hasn't been honest. "Team of Rivals?" All you have to do is look at his cabinet choices, and where are the real progressives? Timothy Geithner? Larry Summers? Several Republicans -- well, I could go on, but I won't.
As of now it's safe to assume that "Land of Lincoln" will most likely not ever be changing to "Land of Obama" on Illinois license plates.
Lincoln understood politics (as it was in his day) better than Obama understands politics as it is in his day.
But again, this doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the average Joe might think, because unlike back then, most of the actual governing and legislating today is coming out of the executive and boardroom offices of large corporations.
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