In his state of the union address, remarking about the lack of collegiality in DC, the president said “I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.”
It’s remarkable that Obama, and others, keep thinking of Abraham Lincoln as someone who “brought us together”. Lincoln was, most obviously, the most divisive president in U.S. history. His election, let’s recall, triggered the Civil War. For a century, southerners openly loathed Lincoln, and contributors to the National Review continued to rank Honest Abe with Hitler as late as the Reagan Administration.
FDR was one of the few presidents more hated than Obama. Only the fact that he maintained healthy majorities in both houses of Congress throughout his 12-year stay in the White House protected him from the abuse and harassment that Obama routinely receives. I don’t think that Obama ranks with either Abe or Franklin, but the measure of a president’s greatness is certainly not determined by the extent that he “brings us together”.
