OK, so Barak didn't come from a life of poverty. But there are two another disanalogies to Barak's credit: (1) Lincoln was a successful corporate railway lawyer, best in the East by all accounts if not smooth by eastern standrads, while Brak passed up the opporunity to make megabuck sin big firm law to teach; (2) Lincoln was, to use W's phrase, a divider not a uniter -- that was not his fault and maybe it wasa virtue in the times, but Barak is a uniter -- he actually can get downstate whites who have never voted for a black in their live to support him, not because he advocates conservative policies, but because he hasa gift of talking to people like one one I've ever seen. It's not Clinton's smarmy charm, it's just that he takes people seriously.
--- snitsnat <snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> heh. from another list. I'll leave the msg from the
> conservative in
> brackets for gits and shiggles)
>
>
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006884
>
> (And by the way, this isn't simply Democrat-bashing.
> Noonan also criticizes
> Republicans in this piece. But her dismantling of
> Obama, who recently
> compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, is priceless.
> Here it is:)
>
>
> [snip]
>
> This week comes the previously careful Sen. Barack
> Obama, flapping his
> wings in Time magazine and explaining that he's a
> lot like Abraham Lincoln,
> only sort of better. "In Lincoln's rise from
> poverty, his ultimate mastery
> of language and law, his capacity to overcome
> personal loss and remain
> determined in the face of repeated defeat--in all
> this he reminded me not
> just of my own struggles."
>
> Oh. So that's what Lincoln's for. Actually Lincoln's
> life is a lot like Mr.
> Obama's. Lincoln came from a lean-to in the
> backwoods. His mother died when
> he was 9. The Lincolns had no money, no standing.
> Lincoln educated himself,
> reading law on his own, working as a field hand, a
> store clerk and a raft
> hand on the Mississippi. He also split some rails.
> He entered politics,
> knew more defeat than victory, and went on to lead
> the nation through its
> greatest trauma, the Civil War, and past its
> greatest sin, slavery.
>
> Barack Obama, the son of two University of Hawaii
> students, went to
> Columbia and Harvard Law after attending a private
> academy that taught the
> children of the Hawaiian royal family. He made his
> name in politics as an
> aggressive Chicago vote hustler in Bill Clinton's
> first campaign for the
> presidency.
>
> You see the similarities.
>
> There is nothing wrong with Barack Obama's résumé,
> but it is a
> log-cabin-free zone. So far it also is a
> greatness-free zone. If he keeps
> talking about himself like this it always will be.
> Mr. Obama said he keeps a photographic portrait of
> Lincoln on the wall of
> his office, and that "it asks me questions."
>
> I'm sure it does. I'm sure it says, "Barack, why are
> you such an
> egomaniac?" Or perhaps, "Is it no longer possible in
> American politics to
> speak of another's greatness without suggesting your
> own?"
>
> ****************
>
> (Just so. Mr. Obama, we know Lincoln, and you're no
> Abraham Lincoln.)
>
>
> redacted
>
> "Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
>
> -- rwmartin
>
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