Jimmy Carter's Disastrous Legacy for Campaign '08

I noted this morning that with the increasing attention to Barack Obama's ill-considered position statements on world politics, we're seeing the emergence of a "Carteresque" foreign policy.

Well it turns out that Paul Miller has a new essay up on former president Jimmy Carter's problematic legacy for the Democrats in '08:

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.

One of the criticisms facing Obama is his lack of foreign policy experience. Carter was under the same scrutiny during his 1976 Presidential campaign. He relied on Brezinski, Anthony Lake and his eventual Secreatary of State Cyrus Vance. Today Obama also utlizes Brezinski and Lake as well as similar minded foreign policy advisors such as Susan Rice and until recently Malley and Samantha Power, who resigned from the campaign for referring to Hillary Clinton as a Monster. The fact that she was hired by the campaign in the first place shows a dangerous lack of judgement. A judgement that is comparable to President Carter.

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.

I'll have more later.

Image Credit: Investors Business Daily