Obama: I have it tougher than Abe Lincoln

[Geee]

Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama said yesterday in Decorah, Iowa, that he absorbs more political criticism than Abraham Lincoln, the assassinated 16th U.S. president, attracted from his Civil War critics.

The comment came during a question-and-answer session where one invited audience member asked Obama how he deals with his congressional critics in the GOP. “The Congress doesn’t seem to be a good partner. You said so yourself, they’re more interested in seeing you lose than [seeing] the country win,” the questioner lamented.

“Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama responded. “When you listen to what the federalists said about the anti-federalists … those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”

The comparison “is hysterical … that is really laughable in many respects,” said Alvin Felzenberg, the author of a book on American presidents. “You couldn’t print things today they said about Lincoln.” Felzenberg teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the chief spokesman for the 9/11 Commission.

Criticism of Lincoln in his day “was even more vitriolic than what you see about Obama,” said Eric Foner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian at Columbia University. “Obama is a guy who has a thin skin and does not take criticism well.” Foner’s Pulitzer-winning volume was titled ”The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.”

Obama’s sensitivity to criticism is bound up with his progressive ideology, which sees political disputes as best resolved by experts, said Michael Franc, vice president for government studies at the Heritage Foundation. Obama believes “he has discovered the truth and if you disagree with him, it’s not only against the country, its unpatriotic and anti-Obama,” Franc suggested. (RELATED: Boehner steps in the ring to criticize Obama bus tour)

Eric Dezenhall, a former communications aide to President Ronald Reagan, went ever further in an interview with The Daily Caller: Obama’s complaint, he said, “is more grandiose than narcissistic … It’s equating any form of push-back with some sort of giant historical crime.”

Lincoln faced a civil war in which “half the country would rather leave than accept that he was a constitutional president,” Felzenberg told TheDC. But “no one challenged Obama’s election, no one tried to shut down the inauguration … to put himself at [Lincoln’s] level seems very vain and self-absorbed.”

[Pepper]

" Obama: I have it tougher than Abe Lincoln"

 

Nope, don't think so.

[SrWoodchuck]

Let's have a comparison here:

 

Lincoln:

 

Known as "Rail Splitter"....i.e.-he split fence rails, cleared land, farmed & tended animals as a young man.

Self taught lawyer[read law books to pass the bar], reading his books by candle light, started a business [a general store], was a surveyor & a postmaster....and a Captain in the Illinois militia. Waged several campaigns for office & lost a few, but was known as "Honest Abe" and was a powerful orator & debater. [Lincoln/Douglas] Saved the American Republic from extinction, freed slaves & died from an assassin's bullet because of those two things.

 

Obama:

 

"Nail Spitter" worked in Baskin Robbins.....and then....well....nobody knows how he managed to attend a California University as a foreign exchange student....or how he could attend Harvard...nor, who paid for that, or any proof that he was there, in the form of papers or a thesis. Had his picture taken as President of the Harvard Law Review. Won his first office, by getting his opponents disqualified. Voted "present" for most of his time as a State Legislator. Worked as a fomenter of strife & racial divide community organizer, in Chicago. Proclaimed a towering intellect & orator.....who cannot speak to an elementary school class without a teleprompter, dais & ambo. Tirelessly works to destroy the American Republic & establish a European Social Democracy, abuses the Executive office by circumventing the Legislative branch; using executive fiat & appointing czars that are not subject to Legislative review or approval, as well as making repeated attempts to destroy the Constitution of the United States, using his vast knowledge as a vaunted "constitutional law expert."

 

My own conclusion:

 

Lincoln: Great revered president.

 

Obama: Great reviled pretender.