McConnell Analogizes Obama to Carter

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has attacked the Obama administration's energy policy -- with its drilling moratorium and proposed tax hikes.

As voters cringe every time they fill their cars, McConnell reminds us that we have seen these failed policies before.  It's Welcome Back Carter time.

Politico quotes McConnell:


"Democrats need to stop deflecting attention from their own complicity in our nation’s overdependence on foreign oil,” McConnell said at the Nuclear Energy Assembly conference in Washington, D.C. “They need to end an approach that hasn’t changed since the Jimmy Carter administration.


“Just like Carter, they’re more interested in using this crisis [of gas prices] as an excuse to push for higher taxes than they are at solving the problem itself,” McConnell said. “And just like Carter, they’re underestimating the frustration of the American people.”

. . . .

 "In all of these areas, the administration’s had the same approach: the less American energy the better,” he added. "If Republicans represent the 'all of the above' approach, the Obama administration represents the 'none of the above' approach unless of course you want to sell them some wind turbines or solar panels."

Welcome Back, Carter

It has been obvious for months that the the Obama administration is just a slightly hipper version of the Carter administration. This point is underscored by Obama's non-response to the BP oil spill. Unlike George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina, Obama didn't even bother to do a cursory fly-over; it took him five weeks to actually show up.

Obama has lost "progressives" like James Carville and Maureen Dowd as well as RINOs like Peggy Noonan for his seeming indifference and incompetence. Now he is on the verge of losing the Mainstream Media, too.

Like Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis, the daily headline has become how many days have elapsed since the BP oil spill began -- how many days has the administration failed to fix the problem at issue or manifest any leadership to to try to improve the situation. The show Nightline was formed after the hostage crisis and originally had the name "America Held Hostage: Day (fill in the blank). All that remains to complete the analogy is a news series dedicated to the oil spill, starring dead pelicans and sobbing fishermen.

We passed day 40 this weekend. That is, the oil spill has now lasted longer than Lent.

Today is the 42nd day since the oil rig exploded, but the Obama administration still does not know what hit it.

GOP vs. Dem. Response to Gas Prices

The two political parties confront $4 a gallon gas and respond with distinctly different attitudes. The parties can't even agree on whether high gas prices are good or bad.

For Barack Obama, rising gas prices are not such a bad thing -- because they force ignorant consumers to finally become green. He just wishes the increase had been more "gradual."

Republicans, in contrast, watch gas prices skyrocket, realize that this hurts individuals and our economy, and therefore try to formulate policy that will lower prices. Consequently, Republicans persist with the shocking notion that perhaps energy independence begins at home, by extracting the coal and the oil with which our country has been so richly blessed.

Democrats mock the idea that drilling in Alaska or off our coasts can reduce gas prices. They complain that it would take eight years for the oil to reach the gas pump, which coincidentally, is about how long ago Bill Clinton vetoed the necessary legislation. In any event, given that today's oil price reflects the futures market, even an announcement that we will begin drilling in Alaska would lower the price of gas today; estimates range between fifty cents to a dollar a gallon.

Rather than looking for energy in an oil or coal field, Democrats cry for blood from the supposed Robber Barons of the oil industry: sock 'em with windfall profit taxes. We've seen this movie before. Jimmy Carter tried it during our last energy crisis and it didn't work.

On this point, John McCain is correct: Obama is running for the second term of Jimmy Carter's failed administration.

And to get that second term, it's in Democrats' interests that oil prices remain high and voters remain mad. (Ironically, it was just that sort of voter anger that forced Carter out of office.)

Just as Democrats had an interest in the surge not working in Iraq, they have a distinct electoral interest in gas prices increasing up to the election. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell addressed their conflict of interest head on.

"Washington Democrats have repeatedly refused to allow increased energy production here at home — even though, as we all know, increased supply leads to lower prices. It’s as if they are doing everything in their power to keep gas prices from going down,” McConnell said.

Obama Reprises Jimmy Carter

The parallels between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter continue to multiply. Obama recently said "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."

It was as if Jimmy Carter was once again lecturing America to turn down the thermostat, don a cardigan and turn off the Christmas lights.

There are many other similarities, some of which appear in a recent Time article, "In Carter's Shadow."

Of the two likely nominees this year, Obama is closest to Carter in background and policy leanings. The parallels between his campaign so far and the one Carter ran in 1976 are striking. Like Carter, Obama had little national experience when he started to run. Neither was given much chance of winning the nomination. Instead of running on a detailed platform, Carter told crowds that what Washington needed was "a government as good as its people"—just as Obama promises "change we can believe in." Carter's message sold well after Richard Nixon's disgrace, and press accounts from the time suggest that people found the born-again Carter to be charismatic. That parallel is a promising one for Obama.

But his Carterish echoes come with two potential dangers. The first is that running as the embodiment of hope can lend itself to a certain self-righteousness—what critics have already started to call �litism. The second danger is that the public will come to see Obama as naive about America's enemies abroad, as it eventually concluded Carter was. Ever since Obama said he was willing to negotiate with those enemies directly and "without precondition," Republicans have been trying to tag him as the son of the Georgia governor.

That addresses the scariest aspect of an Obama presidency: the specter of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez toying with Obama like he is their personal plaything. We saw this when the Ayatollah played Carter, and it was one of the most humiliating and dangerous chapters in American history.

It was, however, a ratings field day for the media. If there had been no President Carter, there would have been no hostage crises; there would have been no need for ABC to launch "America Held Hostage: Day (take your pick). Carter's inability to respond to the hostage crisis dragged on so long that ABC even managed to make its "special report" a regularly scheduled program: Nightline. So it's no wonder that the media gravitate to Obama and promote his candidacy.

Update: Bob Tyrrell notes that Obama shares Jimmy Carter's susceptibility to bizarre gaffes, including Obama's non-existent uncle not liberating Auschwitz, fairy tales about his conception and his seeing dead people on Memorial Day:

There was a fundamental weirdness in these episodes that reminded me of a condition President Jimmy Carter found himself in not long into his presidency. He was suffering some sort of diabolical infestation. Supernatural pranksters had made their way from heaven or hell to trip him up. What was happening to Jimmy when he claimed to be attacked by a huge amphibious bunny rabbit or during numerous jogging mishaps was not normal. Now the paranormal has settled upon the Obama campaign.

Along with the bad luck of eating a waffle while waffling and of having his elitist prejudices exposed to public scrutiny, there is an accumulating junk pile of gaffes that seem to be beyond Mr. Obama's control.

Peanut Diplomacy

Former President Jimmy Carter issued a "liar, liar, pants on fire" statement today, in an apparent effort to salvage what's left of his shattered reputation as a diplomat. According to the Associated Press, Carter "accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of not telling the truth about warnings she said her department gave Carter not to speak to Hamas before a Middle East trip."

Regardless of what the State Department did or didn't say to the former President before his trip, one would think that Carter's own common sense would have told him that a meeting with Hamas terrorists dedicated to the destruction of Israel would not be a very smart move. It really shouldn't have been a surprise for Carter to learn that, after his visit, Hamas would disavow any intention suggested by Carter that the group make peace with Israel. Just as it shouldn't have come to any surprise to Carter when his coddling of the U.S.S.R. ended in the Soviets' invasion of Afghanistan.

As one commentator put it: "He came, he saw, he Cartered."

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