This is pretty good, by Andrew Sullivan.
Think of someone like Glenn Beck.
He sat back and watched Bush preside over the worst domestic attack in US history, explode the entitlement state, engage in unending projects of nation-building in two of the most dysfunctional countries on earth, rip up the Constitution, and bequeath as his legacy a trillion dollar deficit, unprecedented domestic discretionary spending, a banking collapse and the worst recession in many many years. The right will take some time to absorb this but Bush was Carter II – with two full terms. All that rage at what has actually happened – bottled up by rank partisanship for years – has come bounding out. Hence the bizarre spectacle of a president just two months on the job being treated on the right as if he’s already Robert Mugabe. Throw in a little racial and cultural panic, add a world of genuine economic pain … and you have the Malkin surge.
Sounds about right.
I don’t think Carter was all that bad. It was a bad time, but I can’t blame him for all of it; I was really little at the time though and I’m still catching up on that period of history.
Great link. Sullivan closes with, “It will get worse before it gets better.”
I’ve resigned myself to that fact after last week’s psychotic break on the left over the AIG bonuses and the over-the-top demonization of Tim Geithner. There’s no way this will end well – politically – unless some other outrage emerges to replace it. A crisis that mashes up bank nationalization, toxic assets, Octomom, A-Rod, and dieting would be preferable.
Bush was not Carter II. Carter was much better than Republicans want folks to remember. So much better that they had to sandbag him with double-dealing with the Iranian government to get elected. It was the pin him down in the rose garden Reagan strategy, given that Carter thought negotiating the hostage release was more important than campaigning.
Just remember. Reagan took the solar hot water heater off the White House. Yes, merely symbolic but a green economy could have happened much sooner and Carter had the pieces in place.
Comparing Bush to Carter is laughable.
Democrats in the House and Senate fought Carter’s proposals.
BooMan, you do Carter a real disservice. Your comparing him to Bush is really out of line. Carter had his faults, as we all do, but he was a decent person and didn’t win a Nobel Peace prize on his good looks.
He even got important legislation through Congress utilizing new sources of energy like wind, which legislation Governor Jerry Brown (a Democrat) of CA made excellent use of. That’s why CA has so many thousands of wind mills today even though the Persian Gulf of wind is in the Great Plains area which has so few wind mills. States like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, the Dakotas, Wyoming which are all Republican bastions. What an eloquent testimony to the short-sighted stupidity of the Republican Party; not taking advantage of this beneficial progressive legislation.
Want to harm America? Vote Republican.
Jimmy Carter was and-is-a vey decent man. Please don’t compare him to Bush. Carter is the epitome of plain, unvarnished “common decency.” We all know that is sadly lacking in Bush’s makeup. There’s just no comparison.