That's pretty piss poor.

was likely describing Lincoln, his contemporary.

Emerson spoke generally about the president, not particularly one president, but probably Lincoln.

Compensation

. . . .

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and admires and covets? — he must cast behind him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword and a hissing.

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. _Res nolunt diu male administrari_. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an overcharge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to establish themselves with great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all governments the influence of character remains the same, — in Turkey and in New England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture could make him.

These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/compensation.htm

Emerson was in his ideas a Unitarian. So am I.

lived through many Presidencies.

Without a date on the quote, there's no way to know if he's talking about Buchanan, Lincoln, Grant, etc.

Lincoln, of course, paid with his life, dying at age 56 instead of living to be 79 or older.

Ah ha, the date says 1841, so that would be Tyler. Or perhaps Tippecanoe, who was President for a month before he died at age 68

Here's a nice quote from Wiki, describing all the dust Harrison was eating.

"Harrison rebuffed his aggression, saying "Mr. Clay, you forget that I am the President."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Harrison

...would seem to invalidate the Lincoln association; however, theoretically speaking the universalist nature of Emerson's philosophy is inherently freed from temporal constraints and ostensibly transcends the moment, is applicable throughout time, and therefore applies to Lincoln and all presidents--past, present, and future--by default.

That said, the liberated mind seeking the norishment of reason can certainly question or argue the validity or invalidity of the premise, moreover its applicability to Obama; but such an examination, done properly, entailing the parsing of Emerson's comment word, phrase, and holistically, in an effort to divulge its transcendent meaning is tedious work best left to anyone seeking a dissertation topic with which to lull his or her PhD committee to sleep.

For those so inclined, I suggest Emerson's Essay I History may be a useful conceptual framework from which to explore this question. Conversely, you should you actually wish to finish, you would be wise to avoid Nietzsche.

Thought-provoking stuff!

have been reversed and many of his unfulfilled promises seemingly put beyond reach.

Maybe that was the plan from the beginning.

However, I think it's more likely that the neocons were simply biding their time, rebuilding their strength and writing new scripts during that time, watching and waiting, ready to make their come back onto the world stage.

And now they're back, everything's going to sh*t again.

Great men "stood for office." It was a solemn undertaking, not something many people necessarily wanted.

Many people were independent farmers and small shopkeepers.

Today, the low wage worker gets to eat dust every day, without nearly the same appearance before the world, nor the lavish retirement benefits which will be enjoyed in two years by this man only a year older than me.

being an "employee" is a relatively recent invention.

In Emerson"s time Presidents did not get the perks they have now.

"he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne." That sure is right on the money.