Obama's Lincoln

It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings, relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones—by hand, on yellow legal paper—such as his remarkably honest speech on race during the Reverend Wright imbroglio last spring.

Obama does have a talented young speechwriter named Jon Favreau, and on the day before the election, Favreau worked up a draft of a victory speech and sent it to Obama. The word came back from Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, who was sitting with Obama in Charlotte, N.C.:"Barack wants to lean into bipartisanship a little more. Even though the Democrats have won a great victory, we should reach out and be humbled by it. Figure out a good Lincoln quote to bring it all together," advised Axelrod, who suggested looking at the end of Lincoln's first Inaugural Address.

More than familiar with Lincoln's rhetoric, Favreau decided to pass on the most overquoted passage of all, invoking"the better angels of our nature," and to quote the words that came before:"We are not enemies, but friends … Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."...

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