Barry Lemon Moodring

Barack Obama: He’s everyone you imagine him to be! But he’s probably not a fan of Mark Levin:

Levin blamed Obama and his cabinet secretaries for divisions in the country. But what particularly drew Levin’s ire was Obama’s statement that he could have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago. Levin took to Facebook and took time on his radio show to criticize that claim.

“We have a president who is balkanizing the nation, as is his cabinet,” he continued. “This wasn’t about Barack Obama. This was a trial in a courtroom in Florida. And now all weekend long the question is going to be, ‘What did you think about what Obama said? It was good. It was bad.’ So suddenly it’s about Obama. Obama had been Franklin Roosevelt. He’s been Abraham Lincoln. He’s been Ronald Reagan. And now he’s been Trayvon Martin. But he’s none of them. He didn’t live like Trayvon Martin, nor is he any of those three presidents. This president could have been a great president — policies aside — by his temperament, by what he said, by his respect for the American people. This president could have been a man that could have been admired. Instead, he is what he is.”

Wait, what is he again? When Obama wrote in 2006, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” he wasn’t kidding. In addition to the examples that Levin mentions above, and Andrew Sullivan dubbing Obama “the first gay president” last year, don’t forget these comparisons:

In June 2010, The Washington Post‘s Kathleen Parker took the question mark out of the way. ”Obama: Our first female president,” her headline declared. Her column made the case that his crisis management style was more typically female.

First Jewish President: Like this week’s issue of Newsweek, New York magazine went big on their Morrison reappropriation. Former White House counsel Abner Mikva told John Heilemann ”When this all is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” The magazine made it their cover.

First Asian-American President: In 2009, Associated Foreign Press ran with the headline, “Obama the first Asian-American president?” As evidence, the article notes that in his first hundred days, ”Obama appointed a record three Asian-Americans cabinet members and quickly focused his attention across the Pacific. He invited Japan’s prime minister as his first guest and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Asia on her maiden trip.”

First Hispanic President: Geraldo Rivera spoke in March 2009 about the hopes the Hispanic community had for Obama’s immigration policies, alleging “Barack Obama is the first Hispanic president the same way Bill Clinton was the first black [one].”