What Lincoln Forgot February 12, 1997March 25, 2012 Today is Lincoln’s birthday, even though for economy’s sake it has been averaged into February 22, Washington’s birthday, to produce the glorious long weekend I hope you’re about to enjoy. (They were, as you know, the eight-and-a-halfth president, and their birthday is, on average, the 17th.) “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,” said Abe, who never tried to fool anyone. “But you can’t fool all of the people ALL of the time,” To which my friend and consumer advocate Jason Adkins — disheartened by the kind of election victories big-money can buy, like that of the sugar growers in Florida last November — appends, sadly: “but you don’t have to.” (Indeed, if you look at the success the tobacco companies have had so far resisting efforts to restrict their promotion of cigarettes to kids and their parents around the world, one might conclude that sometimes you don’t have to fool ANYONE to get your way. You just need a lot of money.)