Today’s Jolt, sent to the editors late last night, as I’m moments away from departing for a 6:30 a.m. Eastern appearance on CNN:

Asked What She Had for Breakfast, Doris Kearns Goodwin Cites Anecdotes of FDR, LBJ, and JFK
Politico informs us that Barack Obama intends to emulate Teddy Roosevelt. You’ve been warned, Cuba!
And I cannot wait for the vehemently anti-gun senator and president to go out on his first African hunting Safari . . . oh, wait, he won’t be emulating those parts of Roosevelt’s record?
The White House: “On Tuesday . . . President Obama will travel to Osawatomie, Kansas where he will deliver remarks on the economy. The President will talk about how he sees this as a make-or-break moment for the middle class and all those working to join it. He’ll lay out the choice we face between a country in which too few do well while too many struggle to get by, and one where we’re all in it together — where everyone engages in fair play, everyone does their fair share, and everyone gets a fair shot. Just over one hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt came to Osawatomie, Kansas and called for a New Nationalism, where everyone gets a fair chance, a square deal, and an equal opportunity to succeed.”
Politico’s Alex Burns notices that, Last Sunday on Meet the Press, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin urged President Obama to emulate Teddy Roosevelt in organizing his campaign around the theme of “a square deal, fundamental fairness” in America.
At Outside the Beltway, Steven Taylor articulates the trigger for my grumbling perfectly. This is just another example of why DKG drives me nuts: She makes everything into a historical analogy. However, this is not good analysis: even if one can identify similarities with past candidates and presidents, the political realities are so radically different (one example: the nature of ubiquity of modern media) that direct analogies are worthless. Of course, this critique is more about the Meet the Press producers than it is about DKG per se: They are the ones who elevate her to the level of expert on contemporary politics when, in fact, she is not. As I often ask myself in these situations: Are there no political scientists who study, oh I don’t know, the modern presidency, let alone campaigns and elections, for the MTP folks to call?”
At Business Insider, Zeke Miller thinks this will be the central theme of Obama’s reelection argument:
For Obama, the message of fairness allows him to walk the fine line between asking wealthy Americans to pay their “fair share,” without demonizing them. Under pressure from Occupy Wall Street on the left, it’s an appeal by Obama to the American ethic of equality of opportunity, as embodied by one of the most prominent Republican presidents — and it may be his savior.
In the words of the White House, the fairness theme “dovetails nicely” with Obama’s priorities for the rest of the year — from extending and expanding the payroll tax to getting Richard Cordray confirmed as the first director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Overwhelming majorities of Americans back raising taxes on the wealthy, and oppose tax increases on the middle class — fights that have dominated the past few months, but that Obama has largely been unable, or unwilling to capitalize on. The new message seeks to position the president as the warrior for the middle class, who will fight to make sure all Americans can get a fair shot.
In other words . . . “Obama 2012: Because anything else wouldn’t be fair.”

UPDATE: A reader observes that many of us would applaud Obama if he decided to emulate the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency and reduces government spending to about 7 percent of GDP, instead of its current 40 percent or so.