Since President Barak H Obama’s ascension to the White House in 2009, a number of people, political pendants, and belt way spinsters have attempted to analogize his Presidency to that of former ones.  Let's take a look at one from the left, one from the right, and my own analogy.  Just a side note: I have found that more often the not the first statement or guess is closest to reality, and though the President has been compared to 6 or 7 other Presidents (at last count) by the left, I will stick to the first one used.  I for one, think that it is unlikely that  President Obama is an analogy of our former President; however there are leaders in history worth considering, more on that to come.

Left: Obama is the new Lincoln

OK, folks let’s get the obvious out of the way, yes he is also from Illinois.  Never mind that Lincoln was born in Kentucky, where as the current President's birth certificate is suposadly from Hawaii. Like Lincoln he to was the first of a party to be elected…wait a minute, the Democrats have been around for a while!  What do you mean? Well he was the first of the “New” Democratic Party to be elected, President Clinton was the last of the old party, let me explain:   In President Clinton’s day, you wouldn’t have ever seen radicals like Michael More share a press box with a former President (Jimmy Carter) at their national convention.  In fact if memory serves correctly, Clinton even had a photo of him next to President John F Kennedy.  My grandpa Baker (rest his sole) was a staunch Democrat, a proud union member and a believer in both FDR and JFK.  He would have looked at what I like to call Dem Party 2.0 (or Dem Vista take your pick), picked up a sign and join me at a local Tea Party over what it has become.  One should note that the migration to the ambiguous category of “Independent” have been felt in the ranks of the Dem 2.0 the most.   Few today even remember the original one, the party for big government and the people it served instead of big money special interests and Wall Street.   Yes there is no question that based on the color of his skin, one can equate his genetic linage back to Africa, and state that he is in fact the first “Black” President.  This has bothered me from day one, because I do not see skin color; I prefer to look at ones eyes, mind and heart.  Come to think of it, this may have been the reason why my parents went crazy when they met the young lady I took to a school dance once; they obviously were not seeing people as I do.  I often shook my head at their antiquated view of people by color, however beginning with the 2009 Inauguration, race based vision was back in style.  I guess the old saying: “Everything Old is New Again” can be true, if it serves a purpose.   The use of Abraham Lincoln was due to his association with the Civil War, which was waged for several reasons, and has been “White Washed” by modern historians to only be about slavery.  No one seems to remember that the issues of an oppressive and over reaching Federal Government, eroding State Sovereignty, and massive election fraud by “Community Organizers” were also important elements of the succession of the several states from the Union.  Think for a moment about all of the people you know today who fought and may have even died in Iraq.  Someday your children and grand children will be told that the war in Iraq was all about oil, omitting completely the establishment of freedom for millions of people…watch out, it’s coming. This analogy for Obama to Lincoln is actually very good, considering both understood that in a crisis, fundamental law can be changed simply for the sake of an emergency.  Sure everyone knows that Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus, but did you know that he also instituted the first Income Tax?  The tax was intended to raise “Emergency Funds” for the war effort to the tune of $750 million.  No one really knows if Lincoln intended this to be permanent, as he was assassinated before it expired.  In 1894, an attempt was made to start an income tax again, fortunately for an economy that was still recovering from the war, the Supreme Court ruled against the constitutionality of such an absurd bill in the following statement: Justice Stephen J Field Pollack v Farmer Loan & Trust

“The income tax law under consideration…discriminates between those who receive an income of four thousand dollars and those who do not…[It] is class legislation.   Whenever a distinction is made in the burdens a law imposes or in the benefits in confers on any citizen by reason of their birth, it is class legislation, and leads inevitably to oppression and abuses…   The objectional legislation…is the same in essential charter as that of the English income stature of 1691, which taxed Protestants at a certain rate, Catholics, as a class, at double the rate of Protestants, and Jew at another and separate rate.”

It’s no wonder that people’s attention were shifter to a different figure, this type of “Historical Transparency” would have been very bad for the President’s agenda.

Right: Obama is the new Carter

Let me begin by saying that this comparison was suggested long before President Obama was awarded the Noble Peace Prize.  Jimmy Carter’s prize was awarded in the summer of 2002 when the committee wanted to make a statement against both the Bush Administration and the war on terror:   Nobel Peace Prize Statement 2002: “In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power, Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international co-operation based on international law, respect for human rights, and economic development”

The right bases this analogy on the “Détente” style of international diplomacy and a complete abandonment of well tested domestic and economic policies and philosophies that have compounded the nation’s current problems and pushed unemployment into double digits.   Leave it to Carter Like policies to usher back in the misery index. While these statements appear on the surface to be true, without the perspective that can only be gleaned in the future, no one can know for sure until about 2020 if this analogy is correct.  By such time, the damage will have been done, and with the good lord on our side, corrected. The rates of unemployment are indeed similar, and so too is the rapid move toward government being the answer.  The technique of blaming the past administrations for their current troubles simply doesn’t’ wash with the American people as it did in the 1970’s. Lest we forget that Carter made it a point to capitalize on the evil creation of watch lists, and signaling out of certain members of the press for attack by the Nixon administration due to unfavorable reporting (Hello!... FOX News anyone!).  The actions of the Obama administration pail in comparison to that of the Nixon administration, all in the face of a Bush administration that was controversial on policy, but politically and publicly sublime in the eyes of all but the far left to say the least.

My View: Obama is the new Machiavelli

But I thought Obama was a student of Saul Alinsky?  Sure the author of “Rules for Radicals” was an inspiration to the current President,  in a past life he even thought classes on Alinski's words of wisdom to several audiences packed full of budding ACORN members.  Sadly, Alinski was not the great thinker one might have made him out to be, he elaborated on a number of tired and true techniques employed by Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli nearly 450 earlier. This politician presided over the Italian providence of Florence in the late 1400’s, one of may such providences that collectively made up Italy at that time.  Understand that Italy was a fractured nation consisting of many providences (or States). Each of these providences had their own governments, armies, and economies competing against one another.  Machiavelli proposed solving what he perceived as problem by consolidation and unification of these providences.   By creating one government, army and economy out of many he promoted saving costs and effort to all.   While he touted in public such a concept, in privet he knew that this “Cartelization” would also yield great power to who ever controlled it.  There was a major problem with implementation; the states didn’t want to be part of a collective. Machiavelli was forced to decide between one of two options.  Take control by force and be hated, or take control by deception and be loved by the people.  His most noted writing “The Prince” covers such a concept.  The use of intentionally created emergencies within the populous to obtain power was a turned into an art form while going against the grain of such great political philosophers as Plato and Aristotle.  He suggested the idea of creating a problem with a government a solution already set in place; such as setting fire to crops to create phonon with his new government waiting in the wings ready to take over.  He observed that most people are willing to give up some of their freedom in order to restore a normal way of life, seeing their day to day lives to be far more important then some philosophical view of governance.  After all, philosophy does not put food on the table, actions and reality does.  From this intentional use of devastation, pain and suffering to achieve his goal, he coined the infamous phrase “The Ends Justify the Means”. Today we must look at each aspect of our lives as an Italian providence of the past, with President Barak Machiavelli attacking each one with a goal on moving them willingly, in the direction of his control: Green Jobs (Van Jones), Safe Education (Kevin Jennings), Public Broadcasting (Mark Lloyd), Presidential Communication (Anita Dunn), Federal Regulations (Cass Sustien) and the list goes on and on. These people are fanatics, intentionally put in place to stir things up.   While most of these people will, in the end be taken down, they are by simply their very existence in the positions assigned to them, attacks on the moral providences of our nation as a whole.  In most cases a centralized control of these moral providences will be put in place with the consent of the people out of that same desire to quiet things down, and get back to a more normal existence, and will willingly give up a little bit of freedom in exchange.

While Machiavelli did a great job of creating a technique by witch Plato and Aristotle’s governmental philosophies could have been deconstructed, he forgot that even Achilles had a weakness.   While may of the Roman philosophers looked at only two options available to every situation, it was the much older Greek philosopher Pythagoras that offered us the simplicity of the triangle as an easier out.  It was, of all people President Clinton of the “Old” Democratic Party that used triangulation to ultimately win his way to the White House and to push his agenda.  Today that “third” option is easier then ever: Simply say “NO” to either option.  Take a second and contemplate the Pythagorean Theorem from a political perspective:

"The area of the square built upon the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares upon the remaining sides."