Three Great Lincolns

On display at the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, the "bubble top" limousine used by FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower and briefly by Kennedy

The car in which President Kennedy lost his life; also used by Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter

President Reagan was about to step into this car at the moment of the 1981 attempt on his life, when a bullet struck him after ricocheting off the armor plating on the side; previously used by Ford and Carter

Obama Agonistes

Democrats and journalists are talking hopefully about the ultimately happy outcome in 1994, when that year's disastrous midterm election -- the GOP won both houses of Congress -- spurred Bill Clinton toward the center and a six-year second presidency now considered one of the most successful in recent memory. There's also 1936, when FDR was reelected in spite of the ravages of the Great Depression.

It's a long way to 2012, when we assume Barack Obama will seek reelection. Perhaps by then he'll have transformed himself into the new Roosevelt or Clinton. But I fear not -- and I mean fear, because I don't crave Republican rule. For months, he's evinced no joy about the job he won so effortlessly. Instead, he seems impatient and restive, as he has his whole adult life. He seems like a leading candidate to be the new old Bush.

Obama's proud of what he takes to be world-changing initiatives such as health care reform, perhaps even a little smug about having had the vision to force them through. He still blames his predecessor for the lagging economy. And yet I wonder how different the world would be if he'd decided to spend his first two years on nothing but jobs and GDP growth. Instead of turning the architecture of the 2009 stimulus bill over to congressional leaders who cobbled it together out of every ward-heeling pet project members had been saving up for years, what if he he'd spent the same near-trillion on a coherent jobs, investment, and infrastructure package designed by the best and the brightest among a range of economic experts? Instead of spending a year on health care, what if he'd used every public appearance to promise his worried people that he wouldn't rest until every American who wanted to work was doing so?

Assuming today's obstructionist Republicans would even work with him on those kinds of policies, does he have the talent and heart for a log-rolling, back-scratching, Ronnie-loves-Tip presidency? That would take passion he hasn't demonstrated yet. The patrician Roosevelt learned to love his suffering people. After his '94 drubbing, Clinton learned to master and love the presidency. Remember when George H.W. Bush looked at his watch during one of the 1992 debates, a few months before Clinton beat him? I'm wondering if Obama isn't looking at his and saying to himself: I've got two more years of this?

A Few Things At A Time

In a "New Republic" article entitled "Barack's Too-Long Wish List," William Galston says that President Obama, by proffering an FDR-like flurry of projects and reforms, could end up being a Carter instead of a Reagan:

The core issue is the clarity and self-discipline needed to maintain control of the agenda. Consider the judgment that Erwin C. Hargrove, a respected scholar of the presidency, rendered after Reagan's first hundred days: "Reagan has demonstrated in a way that Jimmy Carter never did, that he understands how to be President. He knows that a President can deal with only a relatively small number of issues at a time." Hargrove might have added that the same is true of Congress, a fact every president must keep firmly in mind.

The Great Equalizer

How President Obama plans to use federal tax policy, according to David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

Budget experts were still sorting through the details on Thursday, but it appeared that various tax cuts and credits aimed at the middle class and the poor would increase the take-home pay of the median household by roughly $800.

The tax increases on the top 1 percent, meanwhile, will most likely cost them $100,000 a year.

“The tax code will become more progressive, with relatively higher rates on the rich and relatively lower rates on the middle class and poor,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington. “This is reversing the effects of the Bush policies,” he added, and then going even further.

And just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tax increases on the wealthy followed a stock market crash, which had already depressed their incomes, Mr. Obama’s proposals — if they become law — would too. The combination has the potential to reverse a significant portion of the inequality trends of the last few decades.

Obama Surges Ahead Of FDR And Reagan

Lou Cannon:

President Barack Obama, the toast of the world before he took the oath of office, is off to a better start than either his detractors or his supporters seem to realize. He’s getting a particularly bad rap on his commitment to bipartisanship — while 74 percent of respondents to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll said he was “trying to work with Republicans,” only 37 percent felt bipartisanship was the right approach, while 56 percent said he should “stick to the policies” he promised in the campaign.

However, it was President Obama’s efforts to reach out to Republican moderates that enabled him to win a crucial victory in the Senate on the most gigantic financial stimulus in the nation’s history. In fact, in terms of what he has accomplished in a short time, Mr. Obama is ahead of two other presidential over-achievers: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Would Two Kennedys In London Make A Right?

Steve Clemons, distinguished founding executive director of The Nixon Center, has written to friends promoting his intriguing idea that the PE should end the awkwardness created by Caroline Kennedy's senatorial ambitions by appointing her as ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

One potential problem is that her grandfather Joseph served in the same post, from which he notoriously resisted Winston Churchill's warnings about Nazi aggression, supported appeasement, tried to meet with Adolph Hitler without President Roosevelt's permission, and opposed wartime aid to Great Britain.

Londoners of a certain age may still wish to give an Ambassador Kennedy a piece of their minds.

Which Denomination Will Obama Rescue?

Washington's churches are elbowing each other to have the Obamas as parishioners. The unchurched may assume this is because they are to be the President, First Lady, and their children. Pastors, especially those in the struggling mainline denominations, will tell you it's because they're breathing.

Historian Gary Scott Smith on the Presidency and the pews:

Roosevelt served as the senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, New York the entire time he was president and devoted a significant amount of time and energy to this position. Nevertheless, he only worshipped about once a month, usually at St. John's Episcopal Church, known as the "church of the presidents," because many of the early chief executives beginning with James Madison worshipped there. Roosevelt claimed it was difficult to worship God with so many people staring at him. "I can do almost everything in the 'Goldfish Bowl' of the president's life," he declared, "but I'll be hanged if I can say my prayers in it."

The Jubilee Train Was A Little Late

Reviewing some recent scholarship about the New Deal, Mona Charen argues that massive federal spending didn't reduce unemployment. She offers this May 1939 quotation from congressional testimony by FDR's own Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau:

We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.