History...repeats itself?

One of the major movements of the Enlightenment was the study of history. The philosophes found themselves questioning veritability and the difference between good and evil. Prominent was the question, "How did we get here?"

Dr. Bjornstad made mention that current day politicians touch up on their history in hopes of applying processes from the past to current day situations. Apparantly Barack Obama is "touching up on his Lincoln". So, what if he does? What if he becomes an expert on Abraham Lincoln's presidential term? How will that help us today?

I pose this question merely because of our study in S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action. According to the author, no two contexts are ever identical. How, then, can an event that occured during Lincoln's term in the nineteenth century possibly assist the president in his current duty in the twenty-first century? Due to my background in semantics, I would feel uncomfortable to say that history "repeats" itself. I understand that aspects may correlate, but I don't believe that they could ever be identical. This is an obvious point, it seems. Why haven't the politicians caught on? I'm just curious.

(Sam Maliha)