Isaac Chotiner flags a disturbing statement by William Kristol from Fox News Sunday in which he suggests that Barack Obama would have backed Stephen Douglas over Abraham Lincoln:

We’re electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we’ll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama’s speech is a “can’t we get along” speech–sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858.[Italics Mine]

Note the inflammatory implications of this attack. Kristol suggests that Obama — a black man who is not African American — would have supported Douglas, who supported allowing settlers to choose whether to have slavery, over Lincoln, who opposed the expansion of slavery.