I think W is the new Jimmy Carter...

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 5:17pm

... except without the soul, conscience or even a shred of empathy.

As conservo David Brooks noted in the Times today:

And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.

Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.

Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.

Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.

The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them...

As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.

"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.

I'm sure it's just one of those major cosmic coincidences that the Stones have a new album out on Tuesday with a delta blues number called "Back of My Hand" with the lyrics warning that there is "trouble a-comin'."


The Bursting Point

Posted: 9/4/05 at 5:32pm

Namo - the last time it happened, we ended up with Reagan. One can only hope that 'something different this way comes'.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 5:42pm

Remember those insaniacs who raised money and put commercials on TV to urge that the US Constitution be rewritten so that foreign-born Arnold Schwarzangrubierre could run for president? With the muscles and the pumping and the catchphrases and the what-nots?

Maybe we should just bring back Clinton, the way the producers of Dallas brought back Bobby. There was a budget surplus, since plundered by W and his rich cronies. There was a Federal Emergency Management Agency that had a budget and people power, since de-funded by W and folded into Das Abteilung Homeland Sicherheit with Michael "What I am Telling You Bares No Resemblance to What You Can See With Your Own Eyes" Chertoff as its head.

I mean, it's not such a crazy idea. Whenever the crap hits the oscillator, W calls Clinton back in. Why should HE be the only one who gets to do that?

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:00pm

If I were Jimmy C, I would be horrified to even have my named included in the same sentence as shrub.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:06pm

Believe me, I have enormous respect for Carter, but since the Bush apollogists (and truly, that's pretty much what most of them amount to at this point) always invoke him as "worst. president. ever." I thought I would put W on a scale they could comprehend.

I lived through the end of the '70s. I knew the end of the '70s. And this last year makes the end of the '70s look like life before The Expulsion from the Garden.

[Jon]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:16pm

Jimmy Carter has done more good in the 25 years since he left the White House than little Georgie has done in his entire life. When most men settle for retirement, he goes and builds houses for the homeless and negotiates peace settlements.

I predict Goergie will spend his port-presidential years just like Gerald Ford - on the golf course.

[Mamie]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:24pm

I've got to tell you that the title of this thread really turned my stomach.

It doesn't mean a da'n thing, but in this area you have many, many opportunities to meet a President. I would have liked to have met Clinton, but it just never happened. The only President I have gone out of my way to meet was Carter. I'm proud of that and I'll always remember that day. A lot of people could learn a lot about how to live by watching that guy.

(And his way of shaking hands is pretty wonderful too.)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:42pm

Believe me, I LOVE Jimmy Carter and respect him enormously. And Republican spin on him was horribly unkind (not to mention the behind-the-scenes manipulations to make sure the hostages in Iran would not be released until the day Reagan was sworn in as President). History will be much kinder in its assessment of Carter. I invoked him in the title of this thread meaning "Jimmy Carter, the Republican punchline." That guy didn't actually exist. But W sure surpasses the ineptitude levels they tried to pin on Carter!

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:46pm

But Namo..running a country is HARD WORK!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 6:50pm

Was he jammin on Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'?"

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 7:30pm

I hope so. Though I suspect it was "Missisippi Mud".

[Garland Grrrl]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 8:08pm

in defense of gerry ford, he spent his entire life in public service and earned his leisurely retirement. he is in poor health now. i miss those old fashioned republicans.

[Plum]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:01pm

The old-style "country club Republicans" were certainly a different breed than the neo-cons, and I don't mean that in an entirely good way. But that's another story.

Namo, have you read The Politics Presidents Make? I thought, when he was elected, that Bush was a Teddy Roosevelt/ Lyndon Johnson type of President, which means he'll be followed by a few weaker Republican Presidents until one who turns out to be that party's Jimmy Carter. But if Bush himself is the Carter equivalent (which would still surprise me at this point), then the next election should bring a Democratic Reagan- someone who turns the whole political climate around. Another FDR, in other words.

Maybe I'm nuts, and maybe it's just a matter of time, but I don't sense quite the atmosphere of despair people associate with the Carter administration right now. I think, however, that Bush has struck the death blow for the Republican/conservative era that first bloomed in the Reagan 80's. There won't be another Republican President who can execute his agenda quite as effectively as Bush did in his first term, and the party is going to fall victim to infighting (which you can see already), opening the path for a highly effective Democratic President in 4 terms or so. Well, if you go by the book. :) Maybe Bush broke the book.

[Ellie3]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:04pm

There were probably a lot of big words in it, Plum.

[Plum]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:06pm

Well, I'm 98% sure Rove has read that book. I wonder what he's thinking now.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:23pm

Plum for President!

I just love that you have read the most pertinent book for the given situation. Although the disaster of Bush's current situation is happening now, and 4 terms is just so long to put up with. I hope Bush smashed the book to shreds, or most likely he burnt it along with everything else with "big words" in it.

Of course the big thing is Bush's disaster needs to create the climate for an effective Democrat for President, which will probably take 4 terms or more to develop, which leads me back to the first statement. Plum for President!

[Plum]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:27pm

I'm afraid my Presidential campaign was derailed when I was 8 years old and discovered that native-born citizen requirement. :) And I read the book for a Poli Sci class, but it's nice to feel smart.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:33pm

They'll be eliminating that requirement soon enough. Arnie's people are really doing us all a favor after all.

Of course, you can fit the Rove role in any case, the political genius part, not the evil part.

[Plum]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:39pm

You're completely contradicting my planned future as a hobo with a BA.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:41pm

Hopefully GDub is about to prove you can accomplish both.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 9:51pm

How can anyone compare W with Jimmy Carter? Carter was a decent, principled, religious, family-oriented man who became a weak president because he surrounded himself with inept people. Possibly his biggest flaw was that he never saw the flaws in the people he was dealing with.

I cannot say the same about W. I find he CLAIMS to be devoutly religious, but when was the last time he was photograped coming out of a religious service? He claims CLAIMS to be a family man, but his 2 daughters prefer to party it up in NYC than to be near him in Washington (or Crawford, since he seems to spend more time there than anywhere else!), and he hasn't displayed any principles worth noting.

Jimmy Carter continues to provide a good example for America. His continued work with Habitat for Humanity and his other chaitable works make him someone I can admire. I can't say the same about W.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 10:40pm

I was at a dinner party tonight, and everyone agreed: The next seven-ten days will be critical and worthy of close scrutiny. Keep your eyes peeled for something shocking/awe-inspiring by the man behind the curtain. Karl. This is the kind of climate he thrives in -- a crowded, sweaty study hall wherein the perceived surly jocks start throwing spitballs at the geek, and the geek needs to pull a Carrie-at-the-prom (People are already speculating, only half-jokingly that Rove had Renquist done in to get Katrina off Page One this a.m.)

When spin fails, a dog must be wagged.

But this American catastrophe, unlike Iraq, appeared before our collective eyes in real time. To grasp its magnitude and nuance -- and even its anthropologic implications for our culture -- one didn't have to understand Kurds, Sunni and Shiite history. Or even fully appreciate the impact of the beleagured Louisiana-intensive National Guard being over-extended. This has been a primary color crisis, and has provoked primary color responses. That won't be diluted easily. What will they do to make it go away, in the short run?

Stay tuned.

Updated On: 9/4/05 at 10:40 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 9/4/05 at 11:51pm

DP, I was comparing W to the Republican-created Jimmy Carter brand, not Jimmy Carter, the man. W is beginning to resemble the urban legend that was created during the Regan years and beyond, which is "worst. president. ever."

Short of a phoney terrorist attack, Aug, I'm not sure what Rove could do. Then again, he's suprised us before.