Coming: Year Of Lincoln At Kiko's House

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

-- LINCOLN

The lure of invoking Abraham Lincoln as an historic antecedent to contemporary events is seductive but rather silly. The Culture War cannot be compared to the Civil War, Falujah is not Fort Sumter, the circumstances under which the 16th president led were unique in American history, and the fact that President-elect Obama is another skinny guy from Illinois as well as a student of Lincoln is hardly reason enough to endlessly invoke his name over the next four (or eight years), although that is bound to happen.

I too am a student of Lincoln and believe that he, and not Washington or FDR, to be the greatest president. The reason is simple: No president faced such severe challenges, none grew more in office and none reinvented the United States to the extent that Lincoln did.

All of that and the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of Lincoln's birth is all the reason I need to present a series of posts on the great man over the next 12 months.

Many of these posts will be offbeat. No surprise there if you're a regular reader here. Did you know, for example, that Lincoln was the first technology president? That he never slept in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House? Or that he once kissed a reporter?

Your input and contributions in this endeavor are welcome. Drop me an email if you have any ideas or would like to write a guest post.

-- Love and Peace, SHAUN