Scott Horton: So Bush is another Lincoln?
As Bush runs down to his last months as the nation’s chief executive, and his popularity continues to sink into hitherto unheard-of depths, his retainers remain concerned about the “Bush Legacy.” Efforts are underway on several fronts to attempt to burnish his record. And one figure regularly trotted out to help prop up the Great Leader is the nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. Two examples of this effort came in an extended exclusive interview that Bush granted to Fox News’s Bret Baier, for a documentary entitled “George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish.” In the course of the interview, Bush repeatedly compared himself to Abraham Lincoln. Here’s how Baier previews it:
"We talked a lot about President Lincoln. And there’s going to be a lot of people out there who watch this hour and say, is he trying to equate himself with Lincoln? I tell you what — he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office. And the President reflects on that. This is a President who is really reflecting on his place in history."
Baier’s mastery of history is vintage Fox. In fact, Lincoln had just won re-election by a commanding majority and was emerging as an iconic political figure at the time he was shot down. (Harper’s subscribers can burrow into the archives of the magazine and read the issues from the spring of 1865. The tones of adulation which appear are very different from the reports from the early war years in which Lincoln was portrayed—well, as just another politician.) Poets and newspapers chronicled the passage of his funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois, on a long-arc through the country’s heartland. Thousands made the trek to bid a tearful farewell to their great leader. Walt Whitman captured the mood in his powerful poem, “O Captain, My Captain,” perhaps the greatest tribute penned to an American leader. No, Lincoln left life regarded by his contemporaries as an almost superhuman figure of greatness and a model of political leadership....
Read entire article at Harpers
"We talked a lot about President Lincoln. And there’s going to be a lot of people out there who watch this hour and say, is he trying to equate himself with Lincoln? I tell you what — he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office. And the President reflects on that. This is a President who is really reflecting on his place in history."
Baier’s mastery of history is vintage Fox. In fact, Lincoln had just won re-election by a commanding majority and was emerging as an iconic political figure at the time he was shot down. (Harper’s subscribers can burrow into the archives of the magazine and read the issues from the spring of 1865. The tones of adulation which appear are very different from the reports from the early war years in which Lincoln was portrayed—well, as just another politician.) Poets and newspapers chronicled the passage of his funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois, on a long-arc through the country’s heartland. Thousands made the trek to bid a tearful farewell to their great leader. Walt Whitman captured the mood in his powerful poem, “O Captain, My Captain,” perhaps the greatest tribute penned to an American leader. No, Lincoln left life regarded by his contemporaries as an almost superhuman figure of greatness and a model of political leadership....