"'The public censured the Commander-in-Chief for the bloodshed, for this seemingly endless war. More and more politicians and journalists, Republicans as well as Democrats, called his administration incompetent. Military failures produced demands for peace negotiations. And the President was roundly condemned for curtailing civil liberties.'
Sound familiar? But the president in question (the quotation has been altered slightly to conceal this) is not George W. Bush but Abraham Lincoln. The time is not summer 2005 but the spring of 1863. The words are not those of some contemporary columnist but of poet and novelist Daniel Mark Epstein in his beautiful and elegaic book Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington."
The decision of Michael Barone to start a blog is already reaping benefits. Do yourself a favor and read the entire post.
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