Peter Baker: Comparisons in chief

At various points in the last few years, Mr. Obama has been cast as the inheritor of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot, the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. When he has gotten into trouble, he has become another Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton.

By the time Navy Seals took out Osama bin Laden this month, Mr. Obama’s war on terrorism made him look to some like George W. Bush. Yet as he soared in the polls, others forecast a repeat of the other George Bush, who enjoyed great popularity after winning the Persian Gulf war of 1991 only to crash at the ballot box a year later amid deep economic anxiety.

What makes us so eager to find historical parallels for Mr. Obama? Why do we take one president and try to fit him into the mold of another? Maybe it is because more than halfway through his term, we just cannot agree on who Mr. Obama really is. Or maybe it is the same public fascination with historical personalities that lately has filled best-seller lists with presidential biographies. Or maybe it is just a surplus of shallow punditry in an era with endless hours of airtime and Internet space to fill.

“Sometimes I think the only president we haven’t been compared to is Franklin Pierce,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “But I am not ruling out the possibility of that comparison sometime in the next couple of years.”