I wonder if Abraham Lincoln’s shoes are big enough to fit both his feet and Barack Obama’s? Before the ink dried after the election, Obama said, like Lincoln, he was going to appoint a ‘Team of Rivals’ to his cabinet. He rode to his inaugural following the same route as Lincoln. Took the oath with his hand on Lincoln’s Bible. Went to Ford’s Theatre. Then returned to Springfield to pay homage to Lincoln again.

The press – or a good bit of it – is dazzled by all this history. In Friday’s newspaper an AP reporter gushed: “The stories of Obama and Lincoln are entwined by history, geography and symbolism,” then added, “Like Lincoln, Obama is a skinny lawyer who rose from obscurity and served briefly in the Illinois legislature” – so Obama’s Lincoln because he’s skinny. (It’s hard not to conclude this reporter may have attended the Paris Hilton School of Journalism).

Nobody’s ever accused Obama of being naïve or immature – so let’s rule out idol worship for the reason behind all this Lincoln-philia. So why is the president trying to sell us this bill of goods? Well, he’s creating a political fiction – wrapping himself in the cloak of Lincoln, politically, is pretty good armor plating. Now, I can hear the cynics saying, Well, that’s what politicians do. They create images of themselves and Obama stretching the truth a bit to say he shares a political karma with Lincoln is no worse than George Bush saying there were WMDs in Iraq.

Yes, true. But think of it this way: When a fellow tells you in one breath he’s ‘Honest Abe,’ then in the next breath says, My stimulus plan will create four million jobs – can you believe him?

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