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It was clearly contrived imagery--the commander-in-chief, man of action, the virile leader. We've seen similar nonsense from a shirtless, fly-fishing Putin, and a photo-retouched Sarkozy. Now its Barack Obama's turn.
President-elect Barack Obama, cheered by onlookers along the train route Abraham Lincoln took nearly a century and a half earlier, undertook the final leg of his inaugural journey to the nation's capital Saturday, pledging to reclaim America's spirit but also warning of steep challenges facing the country.Hundreds of people screamed and cheered as Obama waved from the back of his inaugural train when it rolled slowly through the station in little Claymont, Del., on the way to larger crowds at stops in Wilmington, Del., and Baltimore on the route to Washington.
Barf.
I'm not going to be one of those morons who arrogantly proclaims what Americans want and what they are thinking. Yet it bears recalling that Bush's landing on the aircraft carrier was pretty well received at the time by his supporters, and criticisms airily dismissed as sour grapes. That all came back to haunt Bush, and I expect this Obama circus stunt will too.
I imagine for some small minority of Americans, the fact that Obama has dark skin is some sort of epiphany. Frankly I don't get it. To me he's just a guy, and making him into some mythical figure is just insulting. I'm perfectly willing to cut him some slack, to let him demonstrate his leadership, but the cape and tights are just too much.
Tom Schwartz, an historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, identifies the "clear thread" that connects Obama to Lincoln.
“Both of them were born to modest circumstances,” says former Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo, an amateur Lincoln historian. “Both of them wrote well, both of them spoke well, and neither of them is an ideologue.”Obama’s childhood, as the son of a single mother who sometimes relied on food stamps, is a modern analogue of Lincoln’s log-cabin upbringing. Both presidents studied law and bested better-known U.S. senators from New York for their parties’ presidential nominations.
Gee, Richard Nixon was a lawyer, born to modest circumstances and defeated a sitting Vice-President to become President. It might seem appropriate to compare Barack Obama to him, but strangely, it never happens.
I'll just state the obvious--presidents are compared by their achievements. Comparing Barack Obama to any of his predecessors at this point is well beyond the pale.
