Right on the Money

I wasn't going to comment on this topic; but in my general tendency to salute excellence in whatever form it presents itself, I'll put forward someone else's inspired words.

The topic in question is Sen. Barack Obama's reflections on Lincoln, wherein the media darling makes an ill-judged comparison to the 16th President:

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.

Not just of my own struggles.... Leave aside for the moment Obama's reluctance to "swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator." The Senator is comparing himself to Lincoln. To Lincoln.

This is bad enough, but it generated a lot of froth that was probably only marginally deserved, and I decided to leave it alone. Enter the "someone else": Peggy Noonan. Now it should be said here that, yes, I've had a bit of a crush on Ms. Noonan since I was 12 or so, an impressionable young Republican lad looking for inspiration from the Reagan White House. And boy, did she deliver. Anyway, in a recent op-ed piece, this most fair of the talking heads distilled my feelings into a few concise paragraphs:

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.

You go get 'em, Peggy...and don't let the Angry Left ever take that sparkle out of your eyes.