Interestingly, while having a sense of humor, or at least the appearance of one provided by comedy writers, has become a necessary characteristic for an American President in our time, in the nineteenth century, too much humor was considered a liability. And that was the case for Lincoln…

Bob Mankoff on Abraham Lincoln’s sense of humor, and ”the sense of the ridiculous,” a political liability in the early 19th cent: http://nyr.kr/VeNhcT