Obama Is A Peanut Farm Away from Carter

[Whoha]

I think that the concious decision to monetize debt was pretty bad.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Theben


That sounds like a serious problem for a president.

From what I remember, his main problems were the hostage crisis and the price of oil (which was largely out of his control).

He actually did the heavy lifting on the hostage crisis, then Reagan got all the credit.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Carter wasn't a that bad of a President. He was ineffectual because he let himself get bogged down in detail and had troubles making a decision.

I think he made decisions just fine. He just couldn't compromise.

[Colonâ„¢]

I have to say I don't understand Obamania. Didn't the US already just have a president that promised to straddle the partisan divide and railed against the corrupt Washington establishment?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I'd be very curious to know why the Dems ran Carter. This was 1976; the Dems could have run an actual peanut and beaten Ford. Why did they choose him? Was Carter seen as being a great candidate? Or was there just nobody else? Or, were there others but they had baggage or somesuch?

Or were the Dems just afraid of losing???

Haven't y'all heard of wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

When Carter entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1976, he was considered to have little chance against nationally better-known politicians. He had a name recognition of only 2 percent. When he told his family of his intention to run for President, he was asked by his mother, "President of what?" However, Nixon's Watergate scandal was still fresh in the voters' minds, and so his position as an outsider, distant from Washington, D.C., became an asset. The centerpiece of his campaign platform was government reorganization.

Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He used a two-prong strategy. In the South, which most had tacitly conceded to Alabama's George Wallace, Carter ran as a moderate favorite son. When Wallace proved to be a spent force, Carter swept the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters and had little chance of winning a majority in most states. In a field crowded with liberals, he managed to win several Northern states by building the largest single bloc. Initially dismissed as a regional candidate, Carter proved to be the only Democrat with a truly national strategy, and he eventually clinched the nomination.

The media discovered and promoted Carter. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond:

"What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months."

Carter was interviewed by Playboy magazine for its November 1976 issue, which hit the newsstands a couple of weeks before the election. He remains the only American president to be interviewed by this magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1976

The 1976 campaign featured a record number of state primaries and caucuses, and it was the first presidential campaign in which the primary system was dominant. However, most of the Democratic candidates failed to realize the significance of the increased number of primaries, or the importance of creating momentum by winning the early contests. The one candidate who did see the opportunities in the new nominating system was Jimmy Carter, a former state senator and governor of Georgia. Carter, who was relatively unknown outside of Georgia when the campaign began, realized that his "fresh face" could be an asset following the Watergate scandal and the public's subsequent disenchantment with Washington politicians.

Carter surprised most political pundits by finishing second in the Iowa caucus, and then by winning the New Hampshire primary, thus proving that a Southerner could win Northern states. He then eliminated his rivals one by one. In North Carolina he defeated George Wallace, his chief rival for Southern delegates. He defeated Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson in the Pennsylvania primary, thus knocking him out of the race. In Wisconsin, Carter scored an impressive come-from-behind win over liberal Arizona Congressman Morris Udall, thus eliminating Udall as a serious contender. As Carter closed in on the nomination, an "ABC" (Anybody But Carter) movement started among Northern and Western Democrats who feared that Carter might be too conservative for the party. The leaders of this movement were Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown. They entered several Western primaries and defeated Carter, but their candidacies started too late to prevent Carter from winning the nomination. They eventually supported Carter in the general election.

Basically Carter ran the best campaign and in a race that was seen as almost a shoo-in for a Dem candidate (after Watergate and Ford's pardon) a ton of Dem liberals jumped in, and managed to cancel each other out, as the conservative Carter formed the largest plurality of voters (conservative Dems).

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I wouldn't know. But do you think this is a good thing then? I know Carter is seen as a great guy by some people, but less so by others.

Nice guy. Wonderful neighbor. President wasn't his calling.

[Dinner]

Re: Obama Is A Peanut Farm Away from Carter

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
From the state of the current Administration, to the level of Obama's actual experience, to the current economy and its oil tie-ins, to his views on international relations, there appears to be many parallels with Carter.

Are we heading into the late seventies all over again?

Is this Limbaugh's latest line? Forgive me but you do love repeating Rush.

[Lancer]

Mr 17% inflation...or something like that. Gotta respect his efforts with Habitat for Humanity though. There's a Habitat housing developement near Tagbilaran that I think Carter actually helped build.

That inflation rate killed the first roofing company I was involved in though.

[SlowwHand]

He's been great after office. Probably the best ever.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
He's been great after office. Probably the best ever.

Has he been great?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I'd be very curious to know why the Dems ran Carter. This was 1976; the Dems could have run an actual peanut and beaten Ford. Why did they choose him? Was Carter seen as being a great candidate? Or was there just nobody else? Or, were there others but they had baggage or somesuch?

Or were the Dems just afraid of losing???

I saw C-Span play a tape of the 1976 Presidential debates. Believe it or not Carter was a very good debater. The guy was actually a pretty good President but he got stuck first with high oil prices which caused widespread inflation and killed economic growth; similar to now but way more intense since the economy was more industrial. The other big thing was of course the Iranian hostage crisis which over shadowed the 1980 election and which Ronald Reagan acted absolutely treasonously encouraging the Iranians not to let the hostages go until after the election.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
He's been great after office. Probably the best ever.

[Dinner]

Not you, Mad Monk. Should have quoted.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
He's been great after office. Probably the best ever.

Second to John Quincy Adams, another one-termer. But a close second.

In the end, Adams lost the elections [of 1828]in a landslide. He won exactly the same states that his father had won in the election of 1800: the New England states, New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia. Jackson won everything else except for New York, which gave 16 of its electoral votes to Adams.

Rather than retire, he went on to win election as a National Republican and Whig to the House of Representatives, serving for seventeen years, from 1831 until his death. In Congress, he was chairman of the Committee on Manufactures (for the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 28th and 29th), the Committee on Indian Affairs (for the 27th Congress) and the Committee on Foreign Affairs (also for the 27th Congress). He became an important antislavery voice on congress. During the years 1836-37 Adams presented many petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and elsewhere to Congress. The Gag rule prevented discussion of slavery from 1836 to 1844, but he frequently managed to evade it by parliamentary skill. In 1834 he unsuccessfully ran as the Antimasonic candidate[4] for Governor of Massachusetts, losing to John Davis. In 1841, Adams represented the Amistad Africans in the Supreme Court of the United States and successfully argued that the Africans, who had seized control of a Spanish ship where they were being held as illegal slaves (as the international slave trade had been abolished, although slavery itself had not), should not be taken to Cuba but should be considered free and have the option to remain within the U.S. or return home as free people.

While preparing to address the House of Representatives on February 21, 1848, Adams collapsed, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Two days later, on February 23, he died with his wife and children at his side in the Speaker's Room inside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.. His last words were reported to have been, "This is the last of earth. I am content."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams

I've always thought that Adams' willingness to return to government as a lowly congressman, after having been president, was the epitome of public service.

Ex-president Adams

Ex-president Carter

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Has he been great?

What did I say, ears?