By Staff
A clever conservative wrote a letter to the editor last week that played off the idea that electing Sen. John McCain to the White House would give President George W. Bush a third term to say Barack Obama would be like having a second serving of President Jimmy Carter.
There are striking parallels between Georgia Gov. Carter in 1976 and Illinois Sen. Obama in 2008, starting with their lack of national experience. Neither was initially given much chance of winning the Democratic nomination.
Though a detail-oriented person, Carter was criticized for his vague platform when he said on the stump that Washington needed "a government as good as its people."
Obama pledges "change we can believe in," yet many remain skeptical of what exactly that means.
Carter's message was refreshing in the aftermath of Richard Nixon's Watergate downfall. The born-again Carter was even considered charismatic by some.
Obama is learning that there is a narrow line between running as the living embodiment of hope and becoming regarded as a self-righteous elitist.
Obama also runs the risk, like Carter, of being perceived as naive about America's enemies abroad for his willingness to open a dialogue with those enemies "without precondition" – the emphasis Republicans are eager to add.
But let's not stop there. There are also parallels that could connect Carter to McCain, too, even though the Arizona hawk has joked about bombing Iran. For example, Carter and McCain have in common attending the U.S. Naval Academy.
When Carter won the White House in 1976, his party also ran Congress, but Democrats' grasp on power proved short-lived. Carter, our 39th president, eked out a narrow win because of Watergate, inflation and the Vietnam aftermath, but the country was already moving to the right and was poised for eight years of Ronald Reagan – much in the same way that the conservative excesses of eight years of George W. Bush make the other end of the political spectrum attractive.
That doesn't mean McCain, who is personally more popular than his party, can't position himself apart and squeak out his own close victory – as Carter did. If that happens, a lesson McCain might want to extract from Carter's experience is to reinvent waning conservatism in his own image, contrary to Carter clinging to liberalism until he lost in 1980.