Obama campaign dares to make most of parallels

SPRINGFIELD -- The building where Barack Obama will announce his presidential intentions Saturday is a sturdy dolomite structure with thick Doric columns and a facade as plain as the man who spent most of his political career there, Abraham Lincoln.

It was here in the Old State Capitol, in the governor's corner offices, where Lincoln sat with his supporters, plotting his 1860 U.S. presidential campaign. Gov. John Wood wisely vacated his offices, leaving behind his rocking chair and desk and moving home to Quincy to avoid the crowds.

Lincoln's legacy endures, not only because he saved the Union and was seen as a brilliant pragmatist, but because he was able to express what Americans think is the best about ourselves, that we are "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That idealism is being evoked by Obama's handlers as they build a dais outside the Old State Capitol where Obama will speak.

Forget audacity. Or hope. It takes serious chutzpah to mine connections between Obama and Lincoln. (Obama has already been slapped down for comparing himself to Lincoln in a Time magazine essay two years ago.)

But Obama's advisers feel that bravado is needed for a presidential campaign already crowded with worthy opponents. Shrewdness is a necessary quality for a potential presidential nominee.

There is no argument there are many compelling parallels between Honest Abe and Barack. Obama, like Lincoln, is an adopted son of Illinois, an able rhetorician who can seduce crowds, seems genuine and is intensely ambitious. Abe was thoughtful and humble but wicked shrewd, and when he spoke, he captivated his audience with "the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist," the Peoria Daily Press reported at the time.

Like Obama, Lincoln aspired to something beyond the circumscribed arena of Illinois politics. He left Springfield to serve one unremarkable term in the U.S. House and then tried twice, unsuccessfully, to get a Senate seat. Obama, a state senator for seven years, failed in his first attempt to get to Washington, trounced by Rep. Bobby Rush. And although he made it to the U.S. Senate, he has not been there long.

It was after Lincoln and Obama spoke before a national audience that they began to garner public attention. According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, Lincoln's 1858 Senate race against Stephen Douglas was brilliant and "attracted national attention." Lincoln lost, but his ability to rouse an audience led to him being invited to speak before a seminar series in New York, as Obama, 144 years later, was invited to speak before his party's national convention.

It was his riveting oratory earlier that year at the Cooper Union that brought Lincoln to Republican prominence, just as it was Obama's speech that made Democrats in Boston perk up. Obama declared, "There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America, there's the United States of America."

By the time Lincoln left Springfield in 1860, he understood himself to be a man of destiny. And he knew he was going to be leading a fractious nation. As president, he was able to assemble a Cabinet of his rivals, using adroit political skills to win their cooperation. Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy explained that Lincoln "really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character."

Obama's campaign strategists are suggesting he can bring the same moral authority and greatness of character to the White House. That takes daring . . . and hubris.

jhunter@suntimes.com

Jennifer Hunter is an award-winning journalist who is following Sen. Barack Obama on his run for the White House.