A Hiatus for Honest Abe

News flash for the punditocracy: Barack Obama is not a YouTube reincarnation of Lincoln. Despite their common Illinois roots and the reverberations over race, pace Doris Kearns Goodwin, it’s time to put aside Obama-Lincoln comparisons and be realistic about what the new president is facing in a 21st century world.

Evan Thomas at Newsweek obviously did not get the memo and in the new issue writes: “It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings, relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones—by hand, on yellow legal paper…”

But this kind of mooning over Obama obscures the tough, torturing questions he has to deal with, even before taking office. Notes on a yellow legal pad won’t go very far toward stabilizing financial markets, saving Detroit, realigning our Mideast policy and solving the high pile of other problems George W. Bush is leaving on the Oval Office desk.

When President Obama is sworn in, the last thing he needs is gauzy expectations that he will wave a Lincolnesque wand and make them all go away.

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UPDATE: The above graphic has an interesting history is sold on the Internet here.