Obama-Carter Comparisons Dubious
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NEW YORK — Jimmy Carter has been among the country's most active retired presidents, but even the peripatetic Georgian might not have anticipated having his name bandied about in a presidential campaign 28 years after leaving the White House.
Sen. John McCain, who will carry the Republican presidential flag in this fall's campaign, has repeatedly invoked the former president's name on the campaign trail, and with it the less-than-stellar memories of his White House years. Some high-profile allies, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, have done so as well.
The goal: linking Barack Obama to Carter, another Democratic newcomer elected on the promise of hope and change but whose presidency was marred by economic turmoil, high energy costs and a foreign policy widely derided as weak.
More subtly, McCain and other Republicans have criticized Carter for his criticism of Israel and meeting with Hamas leaders. This line has allowed the GOP to question Obama's support for Israel as he has struggled to win over some Jewish voters and donors, unnerved by the anti-Semitic views expressed by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Illinois senator has disavowed Wright's remarks.
Welcome back Carter.
Last week, McCain made the Carter comparison to push back on Obama's oft-stated contention that electing the Arizona senator would be tantamount to another four years for the unpopular President Bush.
"Senator Obama says that I'm running for Bush's third term," McCain said. "It seems to me he's running for Jimmy Carter's second."
McCain made the same claim about his Democratic rival at a fundraiser Wednesday.
"When I look at him dusting off the old, failed policies of the 1960s and 1970s, I'm beginning to think if he would be elected it'd be a second Jimmy Carter term," McCain told a group of donors in Chicago.
McCain's comparisons go beyond names.
McCain cited Carter in criticizing Obama's support for a windfall profits tax on oil companies, saying it would limit oil exploration. Carter signed into law a similar proposal during the energy crisis that helped cripple his presidency.
"If the plan sounds familiar, it's because that was President Jimmy Carter's big idea too _ and a lot of good it did us," McCain said in an energy policy speech Tuesday.
McCain kept up the drumbeat Wednesday, proposing the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors and slamming a decision by Carter not to pursue fuel reprocessing technology.
The Carter comparison may offer some fertile ground for McCain, a 22-year Senate veteran who at 71 is trying to convince voters that the 46-year-old Obama is too inexperienced to serve as commander in chief or be a responsible steward of the economy.
Still, it's not a perfect strategy.
While Carter's political legacy may roil older, conservative voters, few under 40 have any memory of his presidency. To them and to many others, Carter is better known for his work on Habitat for Humanity and as a global humanitarian whose endeavors brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University, said the Carter comparison would do almost nothing to help McCain attract young voters from Obama.
"For younger voters, there isn't any clear image of Jimmy Carter at all except for his international work," Black said. "The better way would be for McCain to talk to them about problems facing the country and what he'd do about them, rather than bringing up Jimmy Carter."
A former Georgia governor, Carter defeated incumbent Republican Gerald Ford in 1976. He served just one term, losing in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
During his presidency Carter struggled with an energy crisis that contributed to high inflation. He also faced major foreign policy challenges including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis in which 52 Americans were detained by Islamic students at the U.S. embassy for more than a year.
When Carter left office, the inflation rate hovered at about 12 percent. The unemployment rate was 7.7 percent and much higher in some industrial areas.
McCain can't make the same comparison to the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas and just 44 when elected president in 1992. Even though a sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, many voters remember his two terms in office as a time of peace and economic stability.
Jody Powell, who served as Carter's White House press secretary, noted that Carter had made serious proposals as president to develop alternative energies and clean coal technology but they languished in Congress after he left office.
"John McCain knows this, but he has a real problem with his base. And I'm sure attacking Jimmy Carter resonates well with the old, extreme right wing of the Republican base," Powell said.
Carter has angered many Jewish voters after he wrote a best-selling book in 2006 comparing Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the South African system of apartheid. And in April, Carter met with leaders of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas during a Middle East peace mission, drawing a rebuke from Israeli officials.
Obama criticized Carter's decision to meet with the group after McCain pressed him to do so.
"Anything connected to Jimmy Carter gives Jewish voters the heebie jeebies," said Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman under President Bush and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "He's a frightening lightning rod, and Barack Obama has the potential to absorb a lot of that lightning."
An Obama campaign official brushed off McCain's attempts to link the two Democrats.
"Barack Obama is the candidate who offers real change from the past eight years, not someone who's been practicing Washington-style politics _ as evidenced by this latest attempt at distraction _ since the Carter Administration," spokesman Hari Sevugan said.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Beth Fouhy covers presidential politics for The Associated Press.
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BETH FOUHY | June 20, 2008 02:52 PM EST |