Jimmy Carter's Second Term
By: Paul Miller
American Thinker | Thursday, May 29, 2008
It was a cold and rainy
October night when my mother and I stood outside a Skokie, Illinois
Synagogue to hear and hopefully meet Georgia Governor James Earl
"Jimmy" Carter. My parents and most Americans were still sickened over
Watergate, President Gerald Ford's unconditional pardon of Richard
Nixon and the disaster of the Vietnam War. They hungered for "change"
and "new hope". Many Americans believed they found what they
desperately yearned for in a peanut farmer turned politician from
Georgia.
Four
years later Jimmy Carter's name couldn't be uttered by my father
without being proceeded by four-letter expletives. My mother cried
herself to sleep believing that Carter's school-busing program was
going to take me from my elementary school down the block to a school
and hour away on the southside of Chicago. Supporters of Israel began
to distrust him as he began showing signs
of an anti-Israel bias. The economy was devastating families with
double-digit inflation and the Iran hostage crisis made Americans
ashamed of their President.
Today
there is an eerie similarity to the election that led up to the
disastrous Carter administration. All the Presidential candidates are
speaking the rhetoric of "change" and "trust" in government. However,
assumed Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has based his
entire bid for the White House with Carter-style ideas and campaign policy advisers stemming directly from the administration and school of thought of the Carter Presidency.
Obama
has already begun running against GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (AZ). He
is playing on the fears of Democrats, Independents and some Republicans
that the Arizona Senator will be a third term for George W. Bush. While
McCain has shown significant policy and philosophical differences then
our current President, Barack Obama is a Democrat from the same
far-left mold of Carter. I contend that Obama if elected, will be the
second term of Jimmy Carter.
The
first signs of an Obama/Carter similarity began early on the primary
race when the Illinois Senator began hiring former Carter aides and
cabinet members to be policy advisers. The biggest name that surfaced
was former national security advisor under Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brezinski.
Why
Obama would want to be in the same room with Brezinski is
mind-boggling. He was the first prominent politician to deny that
Islamic extremism was or would become a danger to the world. In a
February 2, 1979 memo to President Carter he claimed Islamic fundamentalism is not an imminent threat and will not gain prominence in the Middle East.
Like his former boss, Brezinski has the same "blame the Jews" mentality. The former national security advisor has publicly endorsed the views published in the John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which has provided endless ammunition for anti-Israel activists, Zionist conspiracy buffs and Holocaust deniers.
Continuing
the Carter tradition of employing "blame Israel" advocates, Obama hired
former special assistant to President Clinton, Robert Malley. Recently the British newspaper, The Times interviewed Malley in which he admitted that he had visited Syria and held discussions with the terrorist organization Hamas. Last month President Carter also met with the terrorist organization in Egypt and Syria.
As news began to surface
about Malley and his meetings with Hamas, he resigned his position with
the Obama campaign. Unfortunately the public will never know to what
extent Sen. Obama was influenced by Malley. Obama has called for direct
talks with Iran, a country that continously calls for the destruction
of the state of Israel. Malley and Carter are also vocal advocates for direct talks with Iran, without any stipulations such as denouncing terrorism or their desire to murder millions of Jews.
Obama's trust of the above mentioned policy advisors has been well documented by the "alternative/new media,"
so most likely I'm not telling you something you haven't heard before.
However it can never be stressed enough that Carter's foreign policy
was a disaster for the United States, so it must be asked until
properly answered, "why would Obama want advisors who have already
demonstrated incompetence under a previous administration?" Maybe
Obama doesn't believe Carter's policies were detremental to the
America. Does he want to once again go in that direction? America must
know before election day.
If Obama's choice of advisers isn't an indication that his Presidency would be Jimmy Carter's second term, than his speech this past Saturday in Roseburg, Oregon undoubtedly was.
In
July of 1979 President Carter gave a nationally televised address in
which he told America that he believed the nation was facing a "crisis of confidence." His speech would later be known as his "malaise" speech.
During his Oval office conversation
with America, Carter did something no President before him has done. He
gave a speech that was critical of the attitude and way of life of the
American people. Many accurately perceived his speech to be about a
defeated America. Carter dwelled on a what he believed was a lack of
faith and confidence that had overwhelmed the American people, placing
more blame on them instead of the failures of his Presidency as well as
the Democrat controlled House and Senate. "I
know, of course, being president, that government actions and
legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put
my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed
success," Carter said. "But after listening to the American people I
have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't
fix what's wrong with America."
Carter
would go on to literally chide Americans for their lack of confidence
in the country. After campaigning to restore America from the toll
taken after Vietnam, Watergate and the energy crisis, he had failed and
the blame was going to be placed on the people not his lack of
leadership.
Obama's
speech this past Saturday had a frighteningly similar "blame the
people" tone as Carter's speech. While Obama still emphasizes the
failures of Washington he also blames Americans for how they live their lives. "We
can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our
homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in
the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every
other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on
using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account
for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine," Obama said.
Obama
later added fear tactics in making his case that Americans have to
change their lifestyle. "We are also going to have to negotiate with
other countries. China, India, in particular Brazil. They are growing
so fast that they are consuming more and more energy and pretty soon,
if their carbon footprint even approaches ours, we're goners."
Brian Fitzpatrick senior editor at Culture and Media Institute also believes that Obama's Oregon address is comparable to Carter's "Malaise" speech. He recently wrote
about the media covering up his comments blaming Americans and their
way of life. Carter had also become a media darling during his 1976
Presidential campaign. The media pass Obama received in Oregon is a
blatant attempt to not add credence to the argument that Obama is the
Second Coming of Jimmy Carter.
When
you take an honest look at the advisors Obama has selected, his desire
to meet with leaders who promote genocide and rule their nations with
an iron-fist, the comparison to Carter is undeniable. When you add the
fact that both men are media favorites, place much blame on the way
Americans live and support increased government regulation and big
government programs instead of the free-market ideas to solve America's
ills, the fear that people have that an Obama Presidency would by
Carter's second term, is not just a concern, but a harsh reality.
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