Richard Cohen: Obama's Carter Problem
[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.]
Almost like an apparition, Jimmy Carter stalks Barack Obama. The former president has published yet another book, his 25th, which has been greeted with some scorn and plenty of ridicule. Garry Wills, in the reliably liberal New York Review of Books, writes that "Carter is a better man than his worst enemy would portray him as. And his worst enemy, it turns out is himself." To which a chorus of critics would quickly add, "Not as long as I'm around."...
You may wonder at this point why, above, I placed Obama in the same paragraph with Carter. It is not because Obama is as politically challenged as was Carter, and it certainly is not because I think both presidents pursued dumb policies. On the contrary, from health care to the stimulus, and including the Bush-initiated Troubled Assets Relief Program, Obama has done the right things. He staved off both a collapse of the financial system and a deepening of the Great Recession while, paradoxically, being lambasted for doing so. As Carter himself once said, life is unfair.
Jimmy Carter was an odd duck as president and exceedingly hard to like. (I never managed the feat.) Still, on what was and remains the single biggest challenge facing this country, the energy crisis, Carter was right and bravely so. He laid out his ideas in a much-reviled Oval Office speech while at other times wearing a sweater to suggest turning down the heat. In his speech, he used the phrase "the moral equivalent of war" to characterize the energy challenge. Americans would have to make sacrifices. The crisis demanded it and the government would insist on it. Break out the sweaters....
Read entire article at WaPo
Almost like an apparition, Jimmy Carter stalks Barack Obama. The former president has published yet another book, his 25th, which has been greeted with some scorn and plenty of ridicule. Garry Wills, in the reliably liberal New York Review of Books, writes that "Carter is a better man than his worst enemy would portray him as. And his worst enemy, it turns out is himself." To which a chorus of critics would quickly add, "Not as long as I'm around."...
You may wonder at this point why, above, I placed Obama in the same paragraph with Carter. It is not because Obama is as politically challenged as was Carter, and it certainly is not because I think both presidents pursued dumb policies. On the contrary, from health care to the stimulus, and including the Bush-initiated Troubled Assets Relief Program, Obama has done the right things. He staved off both a collapse of the financial system and a deepening of the Great Recession while, paradoxically, being lambasted for doing so. As Carter himself once said, life is unfair.
Jimmy Carter was an odd duck as president and exceedingly hard to like. (I never managed the feat.) Still, on what was and remains the single biggest challenge facing this country, the energy crisis, Carter was right and bravely so. He laid out his ideas in a much-reviled Oval Office speech while at other times wearing a sweater to suggest turning down the heat. In his speech, he used the phrase "the moral equivalent of war" to characterize the energy challenge. Americans would have to make sacrifices. The crisis demanded it and the government would insist on it. Break out the sweaters....