Obama’s Lincoln presumption

He swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. He has asked to give the State of the Union address on Lincoln’s birthday. He rode to Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln’s in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln’s critics. He confides to admirers that he likes to read the handwritten Gettysburg Address that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Barack Obama is inviting the world to compare him not just to good presidents but to the greatest in American history.

There can be majesty in invoking past presidents and the Founding Fathers. But Obama’s quotations and allus...