There are so many parallels between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln.
Both former Illinois state legislators, both having only served a short time
on the national scene before their election as President (Lincoln a 2 year
term in the House of Representatives and Obama 4 years in the Senate); both
young (Lincoln 51 and Obama 47); both known for their opposition to an
unpopular war (Lincoln opposed the Mexican War - also based on fictitious information); both charged in the campaign with guilt by association with
radicals (Lincoln was accused of supporting the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the radical John Brown who took up arms against the U.S. and Obama the "terrorist" William Ayre's and Jeremiah Wright, the preacher who
damned the U.S.); neither fit the profile of a conventional politician
(Lincoln was considered an unattractive backwoods frontiersman with little
education and Obama had to overcome his foreign upbringing, his exotic
background, his very name); both argued against the politics of fear without
ignoring the darker aspects of our history, both expressed hope for what Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature;" both ran for office in a time of great division; both having a sense of history. Obama played his connection to Lincoln by starting his campaign from Springfield, like Lincoln, and ended his campaign with a victory speech last night in Grant Park where the famous sculptor Augustus St. Gauden's "Seated Lincoln" statue can be seen. President-elect Obama used the words of Lincoln in his speech last night in reaching out to all Americans to say - "We are not enemies, but friends... Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
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