In turn, Barack Obama’s candidacy marks the fulfillment of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing black suffrage. Whereas Romney is the most aristocratic candidate, Obama is the least. Not because he is biracial, but because he is self-made. His parents had little wealth, prestige, and power to pass on, and both are now dead. He has chosen his own faith as an adult (Protestant Christianity, as it happens), and he remains far and away the least wealthy of the Big Four. His children are still young. In these and other ways, the historical figure he calls most to mind is not MLK or JFK or RFK—as so many have suggested—but Abraham Lincoln.
Oh, and as some of the framers would have appreciated, he can give a pretty good speech, too.
