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WASHINGTON — Nothing like a oversight to the nation’s capital. My greatest visit included a nighttime visit to the Lincoln Memorial, a taxi driver waiting to the degree that my son and I jogged up the stairs as being a closer inspection of the 99-foot tall marble likeness of our 16th president.

Lincoln sits at the west end of the famed National Mall, looking out over a reflecting loch that, on the night we were there, shimmered in the moonlight through a majestic, almost otherworldly aura.

This time, my visit was wrapped in postelection analysis but, again, Lincoln loomed plentiful.

President-elect Barack Obama’s affinity for Lincoln is no secret. The former launched his presidential campaign in Springfield, Ill., at the Old State Capitol building, the site where the latter delivered his noted “House Divided” speech in 1858.

Interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, Obama named one author when asked what he was publicly reading: Lincoln.

It makes sense. Our 44th president is on the cutting brim; that other president was elected as our rude teetered on a different abyss.

Lincoln had to hold together the union, waging war to do so. Obama has to corral every unpredictable Congress. His pick of a consigliere, Rahm Emanuel, sends a message that a diminutive strong-arming won’t be a problem.

Both men faced dangerous seasons: the Civil War for Lincoln; two wars and a struggling economy for Obama.

They are also connected by intellect, principle and judgment, but Lincoln and Obama are of different times. It took days for Lincoln’s words to filter across the nation. Make that seconds concerning Obama, who simply e-mails his millions of supporters on MyBarack.com.

Obama clearly wants to emulate Lincoln. He has said that if left adhering a deserted island, he’termination want to have a pattern of Doris Kearns Goodwin’session volume steady Lincoln, “Team Of Rivals.” While he’s waiting on account of rescue, he should go to the pages where Goodwin writes about Lincoln bringing some of his most bitter opponents into his Cabinet in order to maintain public and party unity at a time of push.

No coincidence that Obama is considering Hillary Rodham Clinton with regard to secretary of state. She has the continued and worldly gravitas to be a far-famed escritoire, and the political ambition to have being a care in Obama’s side.

The president-elect besides had a recent sit-down through John McCain, saying publicly that he and the Republican senator plan to work together. At smallest one Republican will be included in Obama’s Cabinet. How near more than any?

Shades of Lincoln or the universal counsel to keep one’sitting friends come to terms; one’s enemies closer.

Edna Green, Howard University professor and Lincoln apt, sees lessons for Obama in this story. Lincoln let Congress lead in continuance more key issues but when he was pressured to rescind the Emancipation Proclamation, he held firm, apothegm a promise made mustiness be kept. Likewise, few other than our president-elect and the congressional delegation from Michigan currently support the proposed $25 billion bailout of the auto industry. Yet, our incoming president should stay on point. One in 10 jobs are at stake.

Obama is too uniform and polite to say so, so I’ll say it for him. Come mid-January, Republicans and Democrats ought to follow the president’s lead or simply get out of his way.

“Conciliation be able to only go in the same manner far,” says professor Green. “The crises we’re facing are so extraordinary they require confident action.”

Election Day voting breakouts showed four southern states where Obama eroded Democratic support rather than increased it. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee are the new confederacy. In those states, Obama got a smaller centre of the white vote than John Kerry.

“White southern conservatives have been isolated by this election,” explains David Bositis, elder researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Activities in D.C.

Lincoln, too, faced an unconvinced electorate. About the problem of his day he said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot support, permanently, half henchman and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not wait for the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to have being divided.”

Until it is, just conduce. If humbler classes have any sense, they will follow.

Lynne K. Varner’sitting column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera