It is not entirely surprising that the younger Kristol stands accused of mugging reality liberally, but this bit (quoted and critiqued at Crooks and Liars) fails to back up the charge:
C&L are understandably offended by the obvious strangeness of the suggestion that a black man would not fall on the anti-slavery side. The analogy Kristol is after, however, seems different and fairly sound: Lincoln went to war to unite the house on a principle (well, at least so the conventional story goes, and we shall adhere to it for this affair). If Kristol's summation of Obama's rather different attitude does not suffice, here is Obama's own web site:KRISTOL: We’re electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we’ll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.
Obama’s speech is a “can’t we get along” speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858. Let’s paper over these differences, rise above politics and all get along.
Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success.Lest we have lost track, a reminder: these are disturbing days. Illegal wars. Systemic corruption. Erosion of rights. To mention just three significant crises we live amidst. These one could parsimoniously presume are what Americans may be tired of. Ideology sounds like a 4-letter word only because of the way politicians like Obama use it. Without an ideology you stand on nothing. And that perhaps makes it possible to reach willy-nilly and make deals.
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