I opened the thread thinking it was new. Then, I hit Cicero's post. That was a bit jarring.
Ah! Glad you mentioned cicero's post, since there's part of it I'd like to reply to:
... Not to mention Lincoln was a Republican and obama is considered the most liberal politician of his time.
Although cicero appears to be offering that as a dissimilarity, it's actually an interesting similarity between Lincoln and Obama.
In 1860 the Republican Party was the party for people looking for government to take strong action on left-wing causes such as women's rights and abolishing slavery; Democrats back then, in contrast, were the party for people who preferred small government and less interference by the government on social issues. And Lincoln was viewed as a far-out radical, the most radical revolutionary Republican possible -- which is why his election tipped southern conservatives over the edge into seceding.
The exaggerated fear of Lincoln held by 19th-century right-wingers during the 1860 election is similar to the exaggerated fear of Obama expressed by 21st-century right-wingers during the 2008 election (and which some of the less rational right-wingers still express today).
And that leads to another interesting similarity between Lincoln and Obama, because despite the exaggerated fears their political opponents had of these two men's supposed wild-eyed fanaticism and viciousness, both men were actually strong believers in and practitioners of reaching out, of speaking reasonably and temperately, of trying to work with those they disagreed with, of pursuing compromises when possible and preferring moderate actions to radical ones.
In a decade of hyper-partisan rhetoric such as the Limbaughs, Coulters, Hannitys and Trumps routinely engage in, Obama has stood out as an exemplary model of polite and restrained speech. In that I think he has a lot in common with Lincoln. Both men could speak plainly and bluntly when the occasion called for it, and could use humor effectively, but neither engaged in the petty insults and viciousness which so many other politicians routinely engage in. Both realized they were living in a time when the people of the nation were strongly divided, and both worked hard to try to heal some of those divisions or at least not to unnecessarily increase them. They both tried to put out the fires rather than trying to pour gasoline on them.
Obama has a fairly high approval rating as he leaves office, and I suspect it will grow higher over the years as the need many right-wingers have felt for making hyperbolic attacks on him gets transferred to other people they feel a greater need to paint as the greatest threat to freedom of all time.
(Granted, my data point is 1991ish, so things may be better now, but that's not what I hear. I appreciate that tastes in states differ. )
