What Would Lincoln Do?

Yesterday the United States Mint released the first of four Abraham Lincoln commemorative pennies, on the bicentennial anniversary of his birth. This latest sliver of copper-coated zinc is dreary as anything we've yet seen from the U.S. Mint. In all honesty, we really do wish the U.S. would just have its coins minted by the Royal Canadian Mint. At least R.C.M. coins are interesting to look at.

But seriously, this new penny is just a portion of renewed Lincoln-interest in the United States: President Barack Obama is making waves as the proverbial 'next Lincoln.' This goes beyond President Obama as a visible minority: he is a rhetorician from Illinois, and he is President at a critical juncture. The question that some are asking is the same as this post's title: What Would Lincoln Do?

According to TIME Magazine, Lincoln would spend, spend, spend. Well, our honest opinion is that President Lincoln would spend, spend, spend... and start a war. A really big war. It is conventional wisdom that war strengthens an economy; President Franklin Roosevelt found that to be true during the 1929 Depression. The War Between the States (a.k.a. 'Civil' War) helped vastly to increase the industrial base of the United States at the expense of the Confederate States. World War II did much the same for the U.S. at the expense of Europe.

We're not saying that President Obama is necessarily a war-monger. However, if he is indeed the next Lincoln, or the next Franklin Roosevelt, then there are certain unspoken policies that we expect will come into play. Those policies are ones of war; not small, overnight invasions like Iraq or Afghanistan, but major engagements the world hasn't seen since World War II.