This past summer, a beleaguered Barack Obama invited a new wave of criticism-if such criticism really surprises him or us anymore-by ill-advisedly comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. The subject, ironically enough, was criticism itself. "Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this," Obama declared in Decorah, Iowa. "Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me." Not surprisingly, the comment unleashed a firestorm of disapproval. Weighing in were Reagan administration veterans ("More grandiose than narcissistic," cried former aide Eric Denzenhall. "It's equating any form of push-back with some sort of giant historical crime"); columnists in the conservative press ("He has it easy compared to the hatred thrust upon Abraham Lincoln," declared John J. Miller in the New York Post); and also, for the first time, previously sympathetic historians. Alvin Felzenberg of the University of Pennsylvania called Obama's remarks "laughable," "hysterical," "vain and self-absorbed," adding, "You couldn't print things today they said about Lincoln."
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