Posted on 05/30/2008 9:05:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A year after Jimmy Carter lost his re-election race to Ronald Reagan, Hamilton Jordan, his former White House chief of staff, sat down for a lengthy interview with scholars at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
Last week, after hearing the news of Jordan's death, friends at the center sent me a transcript of that 27-year-old interview. As they predicted, it was of intense interest for current politics, and particularly on the challenge facing Barack Obama.
The main theme of Jordan's interview was this intriguing observation: "Only because of the fragmentation that had taken place" in the Democratic Party and its allied groups was Carter able to be nominated and elected in 1976. But that same fragmentation made the challenge of governing so difficult that he was almost doomed to fail.
What he meant was this: In the two previous elections, the Democratic Party was riven by strife over the Vietnam War, social policy and civil rights. It was bitterly divided by the nomination of Hubert Humphrey over Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and of George McGovern over Humphrey and other challengers in 1972. In 1974, after Watergate ended the Republican revival, the old-guard Democrats suddenly confronted an influx of reform-minded new faces in Congress.
It was in the resulting "chaos," as he called it, that Jordan conceived the possibility of making the one-term governor of Georgia the next president. The "fragmentation" they discovered was real, not metaphorical. Carter won the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary with less than 30 percent of the votes, as four more-liberal contenders -- Morris Udall, Birch Bayh, Fred Harris and Sargent Shriver -- split up the rest.
But once Carter was in the White House, the liberals who controlled Congress quickly took his measure. They put their obligations to their constituencies and interest groups ahead of any loyalty to him. He never had a "honeymoon" and by his third year, his presidency had unraveled, not because of Republican obduracy but because of Carter's inability to lead his fellow Democrats.
What has Carter's case to do with Obama? The individuals and the times seem very different. A white Southern governor versus a mixed-race Hawaii-born senator. A Navy veteran-peanut farmer versus a lawyer-intellectual activist.
But the two have more in common than meets the eye. Both were largely unknown to the nation's Democrats at the start of their election years.
Both faced more-credentialed rivals. Both ran as outsiders, vowing to reform Washington. Both relied on generalized promises to raise politics to a higher standard than the outgoing Republican administration. Both benefited from early plurality victories over large and divided fields. Obama gained his first and most important win in Iowa with 37.6 percent of the votes, while Hillary Clinton and John Edwards split almost 60 percent evenly. Both Carter and Obama lost several of the late primaries, but held on to the delegate lead they had staked out earlier.
Of course, Obama has yet to win the White House, but it is almost as if Jordan were warning him that his toughest challenge lies ahead when he sets out to govern against the grain of his own party.
Because Carter ran against the Washington establishment, he had no claim on their loyalty -- and they easily spurned him, Jordan told his interviewers. Because he sought to appease them by giving the vice presidency to one of their own, Walter Mondale, they scorned him. And because he tried to flatter them by giving key places in his administration to some of them, he faced continual rebellions within his own White House and Cabinet.
This is the cautionary tale Obama and his brain trust could find in Jordan's interview. Obama too has profited from the fragmentation in the Democratic Party that has allowed a long shot, once again, to capture its greatest prize. But if he is elected, he will have to solve the problems of fragmentation that doomed Jimmy Carter.
Trouble is, for me, I’m not at all convinced that McCain is any better.
Hit the keyword “Obama”, skim thru 15-25 articles, then come back and tell me that.
Let’s give Carter his second term.
He nearly destroyed America once.
Obama will do it.
Obama is a Marxist and a Muslim fifth columnist. Captain Queeg is just a run of the mill liberal and sellout to the mainstream media. There is a difference.
Chiefly, they're both half-wits.
Jordan left out the most important aspect to Jimmy. He was, and still is, an incompetent boob. The public picked up on that and tossed his butt out.
Are You kidding me! My Gosh, what do you need to know about B.O. HUSSEIN before You might note a difference? I suggest you start with his books, his advisors and pastors, his non existent resume’, and his wife’s explicit thesis. Good Luck!
Maybe not...but a Republican Congress or one that isn’t dominated entirely by the RATs will make an Osama presidency more tolerable. Keep that in mind on election day.
And the only reason both of them got as far as they did in an election was due more to the hot air and empty promises they made to the gullible masses rather than their actual political skills and knowledge.
And believe it or not, a guy at my job actually believes Carter was a great President; he claims the reason he’s so villified is because of, get this, the Republicans in Hollywood. He even showed more of his stupidity by claiming the things Carter screwed up on were done during the Nixon and Reagan Presidencies (he claimed Nixon gave weapons to Osama bin Laden)
Sounds like someone who would be happy in Revrunt Wright's church. Just clappin' his hands, laughin' with glee and popping up and down in his seat like a jack in the box.
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? If not watch it. The guy at your job fits the profile.
I’m still trying to find someone to make a You Tube video with the Who tune, We Won’t Get Fooled Again playing in the background.
Start with a picture of Obama and ‘MEET THE NEW BOSS’ printed under the pic and then switch to a picture of Jimmy Carter with ‘SAME AS THE OLD BOSS’ under his pic. Throw in a bunch of their similiar quotes - raising taxes, more government control, etc - and finish up with ‘WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN!
Carter created the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed the CIA humint capability, encouraged the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (creating al Qaeda, the Sunni mirror to the Shia Iran threat), embraces to this day every antiAmerican thug and slug----but as Durante said, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!"
Behold the Twelfth Imam of Chicago, the Commie nephew of Commie Uncle Frank (Davis), the bastard offspring of Saul Alinsky, the cleaned-up-nice version of Farrakhan's racist antiSemitism: Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
Whose 57-state reference coincides nicely with the CIS.
He's bragging that he'll make the Clinton 40% cut of our military puny by comparison with his unilateral disarmament in the face of the Islamofascist threat, a hostile Russia, a scheming China.
Carter was a cockroach; Obama is The Blob of the 1955 Steve McQueen movie--
--CO2 extinguishers--he needs chillin' an' dumpin' in the Arctic.
As much as I detest Carter’s politics there is no comparison between him and B.Hussein Obama. Carter is a socialist at heart and B.Hussein Obama is a socialist muslim. Don’t ask me to prove that, all one need do is listen to those who support him. He wants to destroy our military. How well does that fit into the world of Islam? The handwriting is on the wall. People need to read it.
... vowing to reform Washington.
Washington will not be reformed until the aroused peasantry sweep through the streets and alley-ways, pitchforks at the ready, reclaiming that which has been filched from them. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
When that does happen, it won't be "metaphoric" in any way, shape, or form. Remember, the "Boston Tea Party" was over a ONE PERCENT TAX, IIRC!!!
I know that. All of it. Until it happens, though, it makes sense to moderate your commentary. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Plan on voting, just writing in on the presidential line. I'm not filled with much hope that the Republican Party has a clue what they are doing to themselves or that I can help mitigate the disaster they are creating, but I will vote for Conservatives, and in one case for a not so conservative Corker.
Both men are liars that will compromise any principle, destroy any former ally, sacrifice their very soul in the pursuit of power. What more do I need to know than that?
Gee - and Hillary would be better?
Looks like another kitchen sink attack... First they compared hhim to Bush. That wasn’t low enough so now they try Carter. Next up - NIXON !!!
buuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmp !!
Here’s my idea for Obama’s “Change” motto.
His idea of “change” is hitting the reset button and putting us all back into the days of the Carter administration with taxes, inflation, terrorist appeasement, gasoline shortages, government growth, gutting the military and unemployment.
He still doesn’t define “change” so let’s define it for him.
They’re both weak sister socialists.
Not really. Obama is a constant liar, while Carter only lied rarely if it all. Carter sincerely believed what he said, Obama knows what he says is BS.
I see the analogy as very strong. 2.5 years before Carter “became” President, he was governor of Georgia and appeared on “What’s My Line” and nobody knew him.
Obama is a manufactured product with no substance that anybody can discern and no qualifications for the job of President of The United States, just like the unknown Jimmy Carter was. They are (were) both creations made by people who are, and will remain, unknown to us as such, and well masked by the mass media.
Conspiracy? Absolutely. That’s how things are done in this world today.
I agree with that! could pprobably add some more, but that does it fine.
May We purchase this as a SAVE AMERICA poster.
It clearly states the situation for any Dingbats
that may still find fault with John McCain.
GOD BLESS AMERICA and President-to-be John McCain!
Pardon me! I take back my last comment. I misread.
Your statement that there is no differenc is absurd
and dangerous! May GOD BLESS AMERICA and Our President-to-be
John McCain. As a man and a Patriot he is head and shoulders above You, no offense intended:-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.