There have been 44 US Presidents. And this year is, you guessed it, Super Bowl XLIV! So a sports writer from Philadelphia, Don Steinberg, has- using his knowledge of US history and politics and the history of the Super Bowl- matched up each president in a head-to-head with their corresponding Super Bowl number. Check out America Bowl for the half-time scores (Presidents currently lead…) Here are the rules:

There have been 44 presidents in U.S. history, and on February 7, 2010, the 44th Super Bowl game will be played. For the only time in history, America’s greatest institutions will be all even with each other.

But which have been better? Our Super Bowl games? Or our Presidents? Finally, we can find out!

Each day, for 44 days leading up to Super Bowl 44, America Bowl will match a President against the same-numbered Super Bowl game. Each day one will win — and score a point.

It will all come to a head on February 7, when Super Bowl XLIV is matched against 44th President Barack Obama. Will it all come down to who wants it more on that last game day? Keep checking in here to find out!

So February 7th will be momentous. Obama or the Jets, Colts, Saints or Vikings?

Don Steinberg has even laid on some half-time entertainment, US Super Bowl style:

So how did Lincoln fare against Joe Montana and the 49ers in Super Bowl XVI? Over to Steinberg:

Joe Montana led the 49ers to an impressive 26-21 win over the Bengals, passing for one TD and running for one — but he didn’t free the slaves.

The game was among the most widely watched television broadcasts in American history, and it featured the debut of the Telestrator — but it didn’t hold a fractured nation together through a Civil War.

San Francisco’s 20-0 halftime lead was the largest shutout lead at halftime in Super Bowl history — but it didn’t deliver The Gettysburg Address.

And who could argue with that?

Apparently, President Obama gave the Prime Minister a collection of twenty-five American movie greats. If this is the form that snubs come in nowadays then goodness knows the conflicts that we are going to see in the coming decades. Perhaps he got the idea from David Cameron’s gift of the best of British music when he visited last July. Actually, I thought that Cameron’s was a rather inspired gift.

Admittedly, I wouldn’t feel particularly excited by a 25 volume box of DVD classics unless it was alternative classics- Scarface, Mean Streets, Magnolia, The Usual Suspects, that sort of thing. But I wouldn’t see it as a snub for goodness sake. Perhaps President Obama is not a fan of The Smiths but I’m sure he accepted the gift in good grace.

What’s worse, President Obama has replaced a bust of Winston Churchill with Abraham Lincoln. How could he? I am deeply shocked by this. Shocked that it should draw any comment at all. If he had replaced it with Michael Jordan you maybe could have provoked a quivering muscle above my left eyebrow to react. But we are talking Abraham Lincoln here people. Get a grip.

The Telegraph and Mail plough on regardless. James Delingpole throws a completely inexplicable punch at Michelle Obama, ‘Lady Macbeth.’ You can feel a creative genius at work- it must have been a real struggle to come up with the Lady Macbeth reference. Can’t wait for his forthcoming book, Welcome to Obamaland. I’m sure he’ll have lots of opportunities to say ‘I told you so’ each time the Obama administration makes political mistakes over the next few years which it will do.

Janet Daley in mitigating but broadly continuing the attack dismisses the constantly repeated fantasy that President Obama has a resentment towards Britain as a result of British rule of Kenya. I have no seen no concrete evidence of his grand-father’s often cited involvement with the Mau-Mau uprising. In fact, he worked for the British army as a kitchen hand. He is Luo whereas the Mau-Maus were largely Kikuyu. In such an ethnically divided country the notion that Obama’s family were involved with the Mau-Mau seems highly unlikely. In fact, I remember Barack Obama specifically saying that his grand-father was not.

It would be surprising if Barack Obama does not take issue with the notion of colonial rule. I take issue with the notion of colonial rule- who doesn’t? But to expand that into a broader contempt for modern Britain is ridiculous.

No, what we were seeing in Washington this week was rather a return of the US-UK relationship to a pragmatic footing. That may not be a bad thing for either nation after a number of years where it was judged to be too close. We can’t have it both ways: attack the UK for being a US poodle and for only having a business-like relationship with Washington. We have a philosophical, cultural, and historical affinity with the US. We have mostly congruent interests, not least in the direction of economic policy. Let’s be honest about where we agree and don’t. Let’s stop this constant vacillation between hissy affront and sickly sycophancy. Both are false and ultimately in neither nation’s interest.

If we get beyond this mythology then we can see that there are major opportunities for building a productive relationship with the new US administration and Congress. On that score, it should be said, the Prime Minister had a highly successful week. Let’s hope that continues at the G20 summit in April- it needs to.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Now, these Lincoln train rides, the self-regarding historical references, the flighty rhetoric is all fairly alien to us Brits who tend to cast a rather more sceptical eye on the world. There is little doubt that Barack Obama sets the bar exceptionally high by drawing reference to Abraham Lincoln and inviting the notion that, in his election, we are seeing some sort of second re-birth of freedom (the birth being American independence…)

Culturally, Americans seem to approach these things differently- this is just an observation- and are far more celebratory about their past in a way that we have ceased to become. I can’t imagine a new Prime Minister making a journey in echo of Winston Churchill, say, such as Barack Obama is doing on his train journey from Philadelphia to Washington.

I have to say that I have a slight dose of mild scepticism myself. I really wonder whether America is at a ‘Gettysburg’ moment where its very existence and the rights of all men to freedom and equality are under threat. It feels rather more like a Rooseveltian moment which demands a coming together and strong government to avert economic catastrophe. My preference would have been for a more ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’, Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, theme to the speech.

Equally, it’s important to point out that I had a degree of scepticism when I arrived at Mile High Stadium in Denver on the day of the acceptance speech and saw the Styrofoam mock up of the Lincoln Memorial on the stage. Barack Obama smashed his acceptance speech out of the park- or whatever the equivalent American Football metaphor is- on that occasion. It echoed Martin Luther King’s historic ‘I have a dream’ speech which was delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I hope that the scheduled concert in front of the Memorial- Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono- will seek to induce real contemplation also.

There is little doubt that the inauguration speech will be brilliant and will inspire not just the American people but the globe. I just have a nagging doubt that the historical reference is the right one. The election of an African American is a history making moment and both reflects and will inspire change. But is it the second re-birth of freedom? A moment equal to the abolition of slavery or even the legal dismantling of segregation?

One lesson I hope that he does draw from Abraham Lincoln is that it is better to keep your speech short- history is more likely to remember it if you do. Lincoln’s second inaugural was just a few minutes long and concludes with the words:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

That is a man who was humble, aware of his historical mission, and achieved far more than perhaps any other President. It is a powerful historical echo. May President Barack Obama govern with Lincoln’s calmness of thought, judgement, and courage.

The Chicago Tribune sees the mad pastor as motivated by self-interest rather than pride. If America isn’t the bigoted nation that Wright grew up in then what is his raison d’etre? It must be terrible to build a congregation on the basis of hatred and dispossession only to realise that your oppressors are not so scared and angry or so oppressive any more. I think this theory holds more than my frivolous Obi-Wan Kenobi metaphor.

In the same post, I suggested that Star Wars metaphors are cliched and geeky. They are. But this clip, linked to by Pickled Politics, takes the reference to a whole new level. Of course, Obi-Wan is Abraham Lincoln- that other gangly, skinny, Congresman from Illinois- rather than Jeremiah Wright. Enjoy.

1. Gary Wills’ ‘Two Speeches on Race’ compares Abraham Lincoln’s address at the Cooper Union with Barack Obama’s at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The political lives of these two men, these two brilliant outsiders, is well-documented and will draw fierce analysis over the coming months. That Barack Obama’s speech, given as response to criticisms of him over the Jeremiah Wright affair, should be an echo of a speech given by Lincoln in some similar circumstances is quite mind-blowing. Both had to contend with awkward associations, both chose to confront their critics head-on, and both placed the constitution at the heart of their analysis. Whenever the John McCain-Hillary Clinton hydra-headed beast cries lack of experience at Barack Obama, all he need say is ‘Abraham Lincoln.’

2. The Review moves from historical echoes to historical ignorance in Tony Judt’s impassioned analysis of how we are losing our connection with the past which leads us inevitably to our mistakes of the present. In the most brilliant passage he compares the ‘War on Terror’ thus:

But the most serious mistake consists of taking the form for the content: defining all the various terrorists and terrorisms of our time, with their contrasting and sometimes conflicting objectives, by their actions alone. It would be rather as though one were to lump together the Italian Red Brigades, the German Baader-Meinhof gang, the Provisional IRA, the Basque ETA, Switzerland’s Jura Separatists, and the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica; dismiss their differences as insignificant; label the resulting amalgam of ideological kneecappers, bomb throwers, and political murderers “European Extremism” (or “Christo-fascism,” perhaps?)…and then declare uncompromising, open-ended armed warfare against it.

I look forward to his forthcoming book on the ‘forgotten twentieth century.’ But this article is incredibly powerful, humane, and salutary.

Until his book comes out in a couple of weeks, do yourself a favour and take out a subscription to the New York Review of Books now!

Buchanan had it all: served in both houses of Congress, Minister to GB, Secretary of State and finally President. He was a woeful President, presiding over the expansion of slavery financial panic and drift towards civil war. Lincoln, who had only served in the Illinois state legislature and for one term in Congress, proved to be a history maker, winning the civil war and abolishing slavery in the process.

There is, of course, another one-term Illinois Congressman in the current race. Not surprisingly he makes generous references to Lincoln. CV’s only go so far. They don’t demonstrate the real qualities of a leader.

Quick footnote: Obama spoke to 25,000 people at lunchtime today and 13,000 this evening. He had to cancel a rally this morning due to high winds (high AND cold, believe me!) That’s 38,000 in a day!