Obama, Bush Agree: Remember the Delaware

In a strange presidential mind-meld, George Bush and Barack Obama each invoked George Washington’s surprise Christmas attack of 1776—you’ll remember this as the one after he crossed the Delaware—to inspire Americans in facing their current troubles, the Hill reports. In his Christmas address, President Bush called Washington’s move “the miracle the young country needed.”

President-elect Obama, meanwhile, commiserated with families who celebrated with “muted joy” because a relative was away at war, and with the millions worried about the economy. “We have crossed many rivers as a people,” he said in his weekly radio remarks, but Washington’s victory reminds us “that hope endures, and that a new birth of peace is always possible.” (More George Washington stories.)