In this morning's Washington Post, Joel Achenbach picks up on the "All Head and No Gut" theme that David Paul Kuhn wrote about yesterday.

One quote in particular struck me from Achenbach's piece:

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, says Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office. "They kind of were sold Utopia, and they bought it, and it didn't happen," he says. "People were comparing the candidate to Abraham Lincoln before he served a day of his presidency. Nobody can live up to that."

Where did "people" get the idea of comparing Obama to Lincoln? Could it be because Obama chose a place intimately associated with Lincoln - the Old Statehouse in Springfield, Illinois - from which to launch his bid for the White House? Or was it because Obama invoked similarities between their resumes on the stump throughout the 2008 campaign; or because he consistently made references to building a "Team of Rivals" cabinet like Lincoln; or because Obama chose, as part of his inaugural festivities, to retrace Lincoln's route to the Capitol via train, culminating in a star-studded pre-inaugural party staged at - surprise, surprise - the foot of the Lincoln memorial; or because Obama chose to be sworn in using the same Bible as Lincoln?

With all due respect to Professor Wilentz, no one has traded more on the Lincoln-Obama comparison more than Obama himself. So to the extent Obama is suffering from being unable to live up to expectations brought on by that comparison, it is a self-inflicted wound.

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