Jimmy Carter v. GWB

[kennyboyerfan]

Obama says McCain would be W's third term.

McCain says Obama would be Carter's second term.

OK, Loungers, which is worse? I've got a feeling that those of who lived through Carter's presidency might consider this a tougher question than the rest of you. Those days of 20-plus percent interest rates are hard to forget.

[Moon Man]

Obama will be the death of us all!!

TTB

[triggercut1]

Carter in 1976, like McCain in 2008, got his party’s nomination as a centrist insurgent – beating a collection of party standard bearers - at a time when his Democratic Party coalition, like that of McCain’s Republican Party today, was fragmenting and shrinking from its former dominance. In Carter’s case, it was the New Deal coalition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was on its last vapors; in McCain’s it’s the coalition of Ronald Wilson Reagan. Both coalitions had imploded in a large part due to their support of unpopular wars (Vietnam and, now, Iraq).


Jimmy Carter is a sympathetic figure and, I believe, a fundamentally decent person, and I don’t mean to cast aspersions upon him by pointing out the similarities with McCain, but I also think Carter’s naiveté about hardball politics led him to get rolled by history: He clung to the elusive “center” in American politics when it was a vacuum awaiting some bold new direction in leadership to step in (contrast that with Roosevelt and Reagan, who embraced ideology respectively on the Left and the Right to forge their lasting coalitions; four years later, it was the ideologue Reagan that set a new course for the country). Carter took over the Democratic brand and the US economy when both were in a state of steep decline, just as McCain takes over the Republican brand today at its nadir. In 1976, a soft-spoken centrist that did not stir great passions pro or con like McCain might well have been the right man at the right time to embody the moment: In 2008, not so much.


The current times have created, again, a vacuum and thus call out for more of a Roosevelt or a Reagan: American politics is, today, rudderless, adrift, without an authentic captain at the helm. McCain, like Carter, is the sort of person that the public picks when it seeks a caretaker government.


Obama’s challenge – which he has so far risen to – is to fill the void at an hour when the American public seeks a new direction, in a word, “change.”

--Al Giordano, "The Field"

[Iowa_Card]

I don't think Carter ever did the fist bump.

[kah]

I think it's a pretty good testimony to how goddamn old he is that he tries to scare voters by making comparisons to the presidency of a guy that was defeated 28 years ago.

Then again, maybe some white-haired Democrat will be harkening back to Dubya in 2036.

[kennyboyerfan]

I think it's a pretty good testimony to how goddamn old he is that he tries to scare voters by making comparisons to the presidency of a guy that was defeated 28 years ago.

Then again, maybe some white-haired Democrat will be harkening back to Dubya in 2036.

I was wondering about this, too -- I don't think McCain is going to scare many young people with horror stories about Jimmy Carter. Must be a way to cement that 70-and-older base (who do vote.)

[Reggie Cleveland]

I think Obama is God, and I resent any suggestion that he's not.

You assrat.

[Schwahalala]

I think Jimmy Carter was a far bigger outsider than Barack Obama.

[kah]

"That Herbert Hoover SUCKED."

[kah]

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/mccain_compares_obama_to_willi.php

John McCain is stepping up the rhetoric in his effort to pitch himself as the candidate of substance against Barack Obama's empty style, making an interesting historical reference in an interview with USA Today.

"I believe that people are interested very much in substance," McCain said, contrasting himself against Barack Obama's charismatic style. "If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president."

[kah]

[dv6y]

"If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president."

Um, what?

Good chance that Grandpa McCain saw him speak in person.

[hansolo]

If McCain refers to Carter, TTB must be older than McCain with his references to Hoover.

[Jack Daniels]

Obama says McCain would be W's third term.

McCain says Obama would be Carter's second term.

OK, Loungers, which is worse? I've got a feeling that those of who lived through Carter's presidency might consider this a tougher question than the rest of you. Those days of 20-plus percent interest rates are hard to forget.

What were gas prices in '77?

I care more about getting to work at a reasonable price. If gas prices were $1.76 like they were when I bought my truck in '03, I probably wouldn't care about INT. rates when looking to buy a home, because I'd still have a cash surplus.

If INT. rates get to 20%, I'll just rent until things get better.

I still haven't purchased a home yet anyway, but that'll probably change in the next 18 months.

[blue zone]

It's a close call, but as bad as W has been, Carter was a disaster. The one thing he hangs his hat on he had little to do with brokering other than agreeing to write the check.