A History Lesson

Speaking to a campaign gathering in Greenville, NC on October 27^th, Joe Biden revealed that his understanding of history leaves much to be desired when he compared Senator Barak Obama to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy.

What?

I'm sure that Biden meant to portray his running mate in favorable terms, but he might have reviewed his history books a little more thoroughly before opening his mouth.

Thomas Jefferson

Didn't we spend the last 20 years being barraged with the idea that, since Jefferson was a slave owner, we should simply ignore anything that he might have said or done during his tenure as President of the United States? Maybe after January 20, 2009 old Tom will revert back to his politically incorrect self and we can disregard all the stuff that he wrote about, such as the evils of a powerful central government.

Abraham Lincoln

Now here's a man we can look up to! Among his glorious accomplishments we find 1) the arbitrary suspension of the Bill of Rights for four years, 2) the imposition of martial law, 3) simply ignoring the Supreme Court when it ruled that not even the President is exempt from the rule of law, and 4) imprisoning anyone that dared to point out that he had become a

de facto dictator. In Honest Abe's defense we can always point out that he was eventually murdered and thus elevated to the exalted level of martyr before he could be hauled before Congress and impeached.

Franklin Roosevelt

Say what you will about the first Messiah of the Common Man, but you can't dismiss the fact that he was a master politician the likes of which had not been seen since the heyday of Nicollo Machiavelli. If you think that the New Deal saved the nation from the evil machinations of the rich and powerful, how do you explain the fact that every president since Roosevelt has been harping on the same "dangers" that the New Deal supposedly took care of?

John Kennedy

Can you name one thing that John Kennedy managed to accomplish other than getting shot? I'll save you the trouble: you can't!

Of the four gentlemen named by Senator Biden, all were lawyers and three (Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy) were millionaires, with Lincoln being the only lawyer in Illinois that was a total failure in that profession. Two were Democrats (Roosevelt and Kennedy), one a Republican (Lincoln) and one (Jefferson) was elected purely on his personal merits.

Two of these men (Roosevelt and Kennedy) inherited their wealth and these same two also capitalized on the family name to start their careers (Franklin Roosevelt on cousin Teddy's and Kennedy on that of his father, who made a name for himself as one of the foremost advocates of the "appease Hitler" faction while Roosevelt's ambassador to England). Lincoln and Roosevelt both lost their first national elections (Lincoln to Stephen Douglas for US Senator in 1858 and Roosevelt was the defeated vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket in 1920). John Kennedy will always be remembered as the only president who almost lost the election to that paragon of virtue otherwise known as Richard Nixon. While two are best remembered as being wartime presidents (Lincoln and Roosevelt) and one is noted for the war that he started (Kennedy, in Southeast Asia), only Jefferson managed to avoid war during his term in office.

All things considered, if I were Senator Obama I probably would have said "Joe, you should have shut up after Jefferson."