Is there an Obama/Carter anaolgy to be made? A serious concern for Democrats.
February 25, 2008

 
Share

Please REGISTER to post comments or be notified by e-mail every time this Blog is updated! Firefox/IE7 users can use RSS for a browser link that lists the latest posts!

WRITERS WANTED – Keeping this blog current can be a bigger job than for just one person. “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” is looking for VOLUNTEER guest writers to contribute to our blog to help make it worth visiting more than once a week. To contact us, please send an email to the address on our About Us page along with a sample and/or link to your writing skills.
– Mugsy

I‘m no Hillary supporter. Let’s put that right up front. Nor am I an “Obamaniac“. Calling me an “Independent” is as offensive as calling me “indecisive” or “uninformed” and calling me a “Republican” runs you the risk of coming away with a bloody nose.

But I’ve bemoaned here frequently that I’m not happy with my remaining two choices, foisted upon us by both the Media and first-time voters that decided the front-runners should be two candidates whose marquee attributes are their minority status without regard for policy or qualifications for the job.

My problems with Hillary stem mostly by the fact she has consistently been perhaps the most hawkish Democrat in the Democratic Caucus after Joe Lieberman. But when it comes to health care, I find her “mandate” strategy superior to Obama’s. So despite my mistrust of her foreign policy, I could still see myself voting for Senator Clinton.

My problems with Senator Obama are a bit more nuanced. I can overlook the inexperience and his heavy reliance on encouraging people to vote for him based upon what it would mean to elect him (“Hope”, “Change”) rather than sell us on “policy” & “issues”. He was right about Iraq before we invaded. Great. So was I. But no one is saying I should be President because of it. There needs to be more.

Our state primary is fast approaching on March 4th, so the campaign ads are running with increased frequency. And with deeper pockets, I see the Obama campaign ads twice as often as the Clinton ads. I haven’t seen any McCain or Huckabee ads, but it appears Ron Paul would dearly love to win his home state and has been running ads of his own on late night TV. I find the Obama ads reminiscent of the Ron Paul ads, where Paul was excellent as pointing out the mistakes and identifying the problems of the current administration, but it wasn’t until you hear his solutions that you have any idea whether or not this candidates’ solutions are what we need. Senator Obama’s stirring “Super Bowl” ad is running frequently here, which is long on identifying problems, but short on details of how to fix them. I’m glad he recognizes these problems, but when you run lots of ads like this that highlight problems but give few answers, it bugs me. It’s what Ross Perot did in 1992… who was able to attract a huge following (at first) by staying vague on specifics.

I remember watching the 2004 Democratic National Convention when the young Illinois state senator running for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama, gave his stirring “unity” speech (part 1, part 2) to convention-goers. Everyone… even Republicans… all noted what a great speech it was. I remember clearly my reaction when he finished: “Great speech, but I hope people don’t convince him to run for president just two years from now (either against Kerry or after Bush) because of it.” Not even elected to the U.S. Senate yet, and people were ALREADY pondering an Obama presidential run after just one speech (he’s even using clips from that speech in his latest campaign ad).

My biggest fear should we see an Obama Presidency (which I’d say is about 98% certain at this point) is what the consequences might be should he fail. For some reason I’ve yet to fathom, the American public gives Republicans an inexplicable amount of slack that Democrats don’t get. I mean, if a Democrat had gotten us mired in a $2 Trillion-dollar war without end in Iraq, doubled the price of gasoline to $3 a gallon and gave us $100/barrel oil, lost an entire city of a half million people (New Orleans) with dead bodies floating in the streets, violated the Constitution nine ways to Sunday, was unrepentant after getting caught lying of warrantless wiretaps, and most notably, failed to protect the country from a terrorist attack on 9/11, do you think for one moment that that Democrat wouldn’t have been impeached within 24-hours, let alone a prayer of even CONSIDERING running for re-election, let alone winning??? Of course not.

A friend of mine expressed an oft-repeated worry of hers should we see an Obama Presidency:

> I am Obama – all the way….but I’m so afraid that if he looks to win, or DOES win the presidency,
> that someone will not like his bucking of the establishment – and he’ll go the way of JFK and MLK.

Nah, no need to worry about that.
  He’ll be the most protected president in U.S. history. It any President ever had to worry about an entire population gunning for him, it’s Bush. He’s pissed off about a billion Muslims that wouldn’t think twice before blowing themselves up if they could even get near him.

  My biggest fear is that, just as Carter was elected following the outrage over Watergate and a Republican Party so rife with liars and criminal activity that some members of the Nixon Administration actually went to *jail*, yet four years of Jimmy Carter, an inexperienced one-term governor from Georgia, who was deemed SO unprepared for dealing with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, coupled with soaring oil prices and a slumping economy that Republicans were back in power just four years later (despite Nixon/Watergate) and controlled at least half of the government for the next 26 years… that Obama could be the next Carter… a very good man, but inexperienced and unprepared, and despite the disaster of Bush, could revive the Republican Party and put them back in charge for another 30 years.

Al-Qaeda attacked the WTC just 45 days into Clinton’s first term. They attacked it again just 8 months into Bush’s first term. Failing to prevent a major attack early in Obama’s first term would have Republican’s screaming, “We told you so!”, put them back in the majority of Congress in 2010, and they’d impeach him (because that’s what Republicans do).

So you can imagine my surprise when I hear one of the resident Right-wing Neo-Conservative nutjob pundits on “Fox News Sunday” make the same observation:

The Right-wing really really wants Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, so when they make an observation about her opponent, it shouldn’t be dismissed out-of-hand. When the Neo-Conservative wackjobs on the Right at Fox “Newz” are making the same observations about the potential legacy of a President Obama as I am here on the Left, take heed.

I don’t point this out to sway or endorse either candidate. Only to serve as a “cautionary tale” to whomever wins… President Obama.

Share

February 25, 2008 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Politics

Leave a Reply