Originally Posted by
ptwonline
The mess made by Bush will take many more years to undo the worst of the immediate damage, and decades to clean up the longer-term damage to the budget.
As for Obama and Lincoln, there are many similarities.
- President at a time of extreme national divisiveness and particular hatred towards the President himself
- Came into office at a very difficult time
- Tried to build a team including people from "the other side" to help govern the country
- Strong orator, and similarities in how they construct speeches and arguments
- Governs primarily as a pragmatist despite publicly portraying more principled ideologies
- Attacked for apparent lack of faith, and taking mostly pragmatic approaches to religious issues
- Believe in spending lots of money to help out economic woes
- Evolve (at least publicly) on social issues of the day
- Tackling some of the most divisive social issues of the time (slavery for Lincoln, economic and racials divides for Obama)
The list goes on.
Now of course there are ways they are different too. But there are definitely many similarities in ideology, attitudes, and methodologies between the two. Obama is definitely a big fan of Lincoln too so operhaps the similarities are not all coincidence.
Also keep in mind that even though Lincoln is revered now as one of the greatest Presidents, he was considered incredibly divisive and widely hated in his own time. Also, with a small change in the events of the day largely outside of his control and Lincoln could have gone down as the worst US President ever. Being compared to Lincoln is not necessarily purely a compliment of Obama.