2. Lincoln appointed a team "Team of Rivals" (book title by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln and his government) who became both, critical debaters and loyal collaborators.
Obama may have his 'team of rivals' who behave like a team of traitors. (Since I wrote the essay this aspect has been documented by a veteran Washington journalist, I'll try to remember who it was)
3. Lincoln was not afraid to stare down anyone in the market square, think of the Douglas debates. At the height of the Civil War Lincoln met personally with Christopher Spencer, the inventor of the Spencer repeating rifle and carbine in an era of muzzle loaders. This was after the design had been rejected by the war department and was followed up on by Lincoln himself trying the rifle out on the White House lawn; 150 000 Spencer rifles performed a decisive argument in freeing the slaves.
On a similar note regards visionary technology the Obama administration gives zero emission transportation and therefore green industries no real chance. Despite an auto industry bail out GM was encouraged to continue to build vehicles within the game of the oil industry. Some time after the GM bail out GM announced a release date of November 2010 for the Chevy Volt electrical car. Its plug in range of 40 miles is a joke because it is about a quarter only of the range of the GM EV1 and Chevy Volt S-10 EV pick up trucks that were built in the 1990s before all of them were pulled back from their lessees and crushed, quasi as a signal to de-industrialize North America. Transportation technologies have always been the catalyst for overall industrial standards and this renewed blow to zero tailpipe emission transportation represents a serious set back for renewable energy technology. Fluffy thinking is wasting the opportunity for crucial green infant industry planning. Contrary to 'free' market and globalization ideologues from the Chicago business school the nurture and seed planting rules for public investment are no different now than for at one time kick starting fledgling coal, steel, shipping, military equipment, cotton and every other market. Weak industrial seedlings die and the ones nurtured to start up strength may live in a diverse market when government stops subsidizing and interfering on behalf of senile monopolies who are choking the market competition. Wall Street and Walmart, Fox News, the oil oligarchy and Eisenhower's "military industrial congressional complex" suffocate market activities with an anti entrepreneurial lobby culture driven stranglehold. This extends also to the so called agribusinesses like Monsanto, where lobby experts for a hellish genetic fascism had legislation changed in order to attack the essence of life, food. Such anti industrial financialism is not good for business, it just wiped close to half the world's wealth off the book. Entrepreneurial capitalism can return. 'Free' market means anti-market, an Orwellian code word, a demagogue's clever juggler trick. However, there is a little problem. Obama himself is an ivory tower 'free' trader, so when the Tea Party says that America was founded on 'free' trade and 'free' market principles he has nothing to come back with. Without ideological tie in it would be easy to point out that these are fairy tales, only some time after after WW2 did so called 'free' trade, 'free' market dogma, Washington Consensus and a variety of other globalization schemes start to play a dominant role. These constructs describe something very different than a market economy, they describe a radical elitism, a bankster feudalism where being born poor means to die poor, the exact opposite of the American traditions. With some gravity Obama needs to confront the demagogic extremisms of his time which is exactly what Lincoln did, recognize ecological limitations together with economic opportunities of the future. From there will come less momentum for foreign oil wars which undermine constitutional rights at home. A 'full measure of devotion' (Gettysburg Address) and conflicting technocratic measures are very different.
Whereas Obama's vice president Joe Biden is a strong supporter of George Bush's bankruptcy law targeting little people, a step towards new debt slavery. Obama left it to the banks to eventually stop fraudulent foreclosures, far too late. A lost opportunity 'to cross the aisle' on a people's level. Compromise in policy is possible on the basis of the constitutional representative, legislative, executive and judicative structure but not with totalitarian sentiment of false populist instigators, like Rupert Murdoch for example who have severed loyalty with all democratic institutions; be it public schools and libraries, be it the judiciary and the law of the land like obligations under US broadcasting laws not to censor news, be it free and fair elections, a military that follows orders and not attempts to dictate to government.
5. Lincoln who was conscious of the danger that can come from influence of banks on government has famously expressed the notion that: "... facing the Confederate army with the banks behind me I fear the banks more."
Obama appointed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner who takes sides with financial free trade by opposing or even ignoring the possibility of a return of the Glass-Steagall legislation with which Franklin Delano Roosevelt controlled cancerous speculation that had lead to the Great Depression. Until 1999, when it was repealed under Bill Clinton, Glass-Steagall had protected people's savings and pensions but also commercial banking from theft hiding behind fancy titles. Obama's and Geitner's refusal to bring back this proven protective measure against crime continues to be an agent of chaos but also serves as the 'bail out' pathway for the greatest wealth shift of history into a 21th century feudalism.
6. Abraham Lincoln, as did Jefferson ("Light and Liberty go together" T. Jefferson 1795), supported the modern idea of public education, understood broad access to education as vital for a democratic society and for prosperity.
Obama adopts some of the worst of Democrat's heritage while ignoring the best of Republican's legacy in favoring the old class oriented concept of privatized schools, which nowadays appear largely in the form of Charter Schools. These Charter Schools are not just derived from 17th/18th century European aristocracy, in 19 century America private schools were founded to keep black children out.
7. President Lincoln opposed military adventurism when William Seward wanted to declare war on Spain and France and compromised domestically with great skill in order prevent a civil war, while this was possible.
Obama escalated the Afghanistan conflict, and in foreboding Vietnam War reminiscence widened the war of occupation and of bombing people, in this case into Pakistan. A futile calculation of gains from control of Central Asia and perhaps more from domestically playing a 'war on terror' propaganda is also behind his threats of war against Iran; and revenge regarding democratically elected Mosaddegh's nationalization of Persian oil in 1951 of course. Sowing wind in the Inner Asian Steppes right on the door steps and/or land borders of four nuclear powers, India, Pakistan, China and Russia, may yet reap storm.
8. Lincoln at times had an uncanny intuition of things to come. In a speech he gave to the Illinois House of Representatives on Dec., 18 in 1840 he said: "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Different to Lincoln being able to look back at the great prohibition failure from 1920 - 1933, Obama continues Nixon's dirty war on drugs which polices and incarcerates almost exclusively low income people, who as a fact, consume no more street drugs than the well to do. It practically is "The New Jim Crow" (report by Michelle Alexander), which eats the wealth of nations and single handedly creates crime cartels that destroy entire countries such as Mexico.
9. Lincoln was good at timing, he knew a window of opportunity when it presented itself.
Obama still has one, he can prosecute the banksters, bring the Glass-Steagall legislation back, the appointment of Elizabeth Warren in connection with the new Consumer Protection Bureau was a hopeful sign. Since Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, was ousted, she is a lonesome first in a 'team of rivals' that has Abraham Lincoln smiling.
10. In his appointments Lincoln played intentionally with fire but shrewdly guided and wisely harnessed its power on behalf of the people who he took great effort to win over; that is why Abraham Lincoln was re-elected for a second term in 1864. He would have known how to sort out the leadership of the Republican Fox Tea-V party especially when and where old or new slavery propaganda attacks the constitution. By breaking up totalitarian measures of predecessor Bush, like the off shore concentration camps of Bagram and Guantanamo and the Military Commissions Act and by remembering freedom of speech and association is not just for elites but also for working people? Its not just about Obama, if he fails another chance at a democratic revival may be generations away. In the presidential election of 2012 first African-American president and reluctant Lincoln scholar ...
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