NOBEL PRIZE IS NEXT ON HIS LIST:

America's next top role model: Lincoln is his idol. So why is Obama starting to talk so much like Jimmy Carter? (Kyle Smith, September 20, 2009, NY Post)

An episode of the PBS program American Experience said of Carter, "His tenacity, so admirable, could shift to stubbornness; his religious faith to self-righteousness. His brilliant mind could be bound up by intricate details." If these things were true of him, are they not even truer of the man who is currently waging a four-front war on the insurance industry, Wall Street, carbon emissions and the recession, not to mention a couple more wars overseas?

The transformation of Obama from Lincoln to Carter, from Great Emancipator to Bitter Scold was foretold by the wise political analysts we ignore at our peril: "The Simpsons."

In 1993, when Springfield yearned to erect a statue of Lincoln, all it got was a cheaper one — of Carter. As the people realized that they'd been had, one of them yelled of Carter, "He's history's greatest monster!" A riot broke out, a vision of tea parties yet to come. On Carter's pedestal were chiseled two words that are starting to sound like the motto of the Obama years: "Malaise Forever."