Jimmy Carter’s Second Term

Jimmy Carter’s Second Term
By Jeffrey Lord

Published 5/13/2008 12:07:55 AM


You have to admit it takes guts. Audacity, even.

Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democrats, has in essence just defeated the heiress of the Clinton era by campaigning as the heir-apparent of the Carter era.

The question for the rest of the year is this: Are there enough voting Americans who survived the disastrous odyssey through the late 1970s that was led by blessedly now ex-president Jimmy Carter? While Ronald Reagan is rated in poll after poll by Americans as a great president, (most recently he rated second only to Lincoln), are there enough people who recall that Reagan's election came about because of Carter's...ahhh..."performance" in the Oval Office? And will they be able to make the Obama-Carter connection for younger voters hearing terms like "windfall profits tax" for the first time? More to the point, can Senator John McCain do this?

The greatest charade of the year thus far is the idea that something "new" is being said in this campaign. By anybody. To be bluntly accurate, the only thing new is that one of the final two candidates is black. It seems to escape some that in a country even as young as America, 55 presidential elections (2008 is the 56th) covers just about all the ground there is to cover in debating any given next four years in the life of the United States. Consider.

Since the 1788 election that produced (unopposed) George Washington as the first president, the agenda for presidential elections has been narrowed to one underlying issue: the role of government. Understood in that fashion, the following 220 years of American history can be read as if with Superman's X-ray vision. From slavery to abortion, the War of 1812 to the War in Iraq, from Lincoln's support for "internal improvements" to John McCain's disdain for congressional earmarks, the question at issue was the role of government. Whether dealing with the isolationism of Washington or Robert Taft or Ron Paul instead of the internationalism of Jefferson's chase after the Barbary pirates, Wilson's League of Nations or Ronald Reagan's determination to win the Cold War, the underlying question every time was the role of government.

This can be expressed in terms of its size (big or small), of its engagement with the world (the kind and quality of diplomacy) and its ability to protect American citizens (do we do it here or over there?). Yet always the issue is exactly the same. It is the underlying skeleton and vital organs of every question of policy facing the American people.

So too is it more than safe to say that America has seen every kind of candidate there is to be had in these 55 elections. Only the packaging is different in number 56, a truism of every previous election. Black this time for Obama, female for Hillary, there was Catholic for JFK. Short for Martin Van Buren, tall, skinny and hot tempered for Andrew Jackson. A failed haberdasher in Truman, a glossy movie actor in Reagan, a joke-cracking railroad lawyer in Lincoln and a school teacher in LBJ. A peanut farmer with Carter. Yet what each was saying both as candidate and president fell along one side or the other of the role of government argument. And as the string of American presidents and presidential campaigns gets longer, the newest candidates and the latest president have taken to looking backwards to select the presidential policies of admired predecessors

Which makes the audacity of the Obama campaign more than amusing -- and amazing -- to watch. Consciously or not, Obama has selected the philosophical template of the Carter administration, from defunding the military, fighting the "special interests" down to imposing the windfall profits tax on the rich. Well, as Justice Clarence Thomas might say: whoop-dee-damn-do! This is precisely the philosophy of Jimmy Carter, although Carter had the good sense not to campaign as the pacifist he really is in 1976, waiting until the moment his hand came off the bible for that.


IS IT POSSIBLE that America really wants to return to those depressing days of gas lines and leisure suits? Of malaise and shock over the aggressiveness of America's enemies? The days when the policies Obama is advocating raised unemployment rates, interest rates and inflation rates into the double digits? When America's enemies looked the President of the United States in the eye -- and found he really wanted to kiss them on the cheek?

After all of those 55 previous elections for president, with policy results seriously on record from George Washington to George W. Bush, it doesn't take much now to understand what doesn't work. The policy failures, not only of American presidents but world leaders in general, are all right out there to be seen.

Obama's windfall profits tax idea? A Jimmy Carter biggie. "Unless we tax the oil companies, they will reap huge and undeserved windfall profits," fumed Carter on national television in 1980. The New York Times agreed, warning darkly that "legislators who sit by idly while oil profits soar will have to answer to the voters." With Democrats controlling Congress they got their way. As if on cue, oil production -- fell. To the tune of 1.6 billion fewer barrels. America's dependence on foreign oil rose. Eventually even the Times was agreeing the tax had to be repealed, and by 1988 Reagan, who campaigned against it, signed the repeal (by a Democrat Congress no less) into law. And Obama wants to do this all over again? Yes. It's not only not a new idea, it's not a better idea. Yet in terms of Obama, most tellingly it was a Carter idea.

Another Carter favorite was to appear to attack the wealthy, going after "rich businessmen" who enjoyed themselves with the "$50 martini lunch." Elected, Carter went after the martini business lunch tax deduction all right, but then quickly turned on the middle class with a Social Security payroll tax. Obama is already well on board with Carteresque rhetoric about "tax cuts for the wealthy." What taxes will a President Obama raise that, as with Carter, can't be discussed as a candidate?

Appeasement and the notion that we can look evil in the eye and smile? Another Carter favorite (captured forever with the image of the American president kissing Brezhnev on the cheek at a Moscow summit in 1979) that more famously was the notion underpinning British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's desperate face-to-face sitdowns with Adolph Hitler. Didn't work either time, nor will it ever work as Obama seems to be seriously proposing with Iran. Why? Because bullies are bullies -- be they Russian Communists, German dictators or Iranian mullahs. Senator John McCain succinctly sums up Obama's take as a lack of both judgment and experience, which surely is true.


BUT OBAMA'S VIEWS are also something else. They are the product of a world view that has been around for centuries -- failing every time it's tried. Obama's campaign website says Obama "will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. He will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate- range missiles so that the agreement is global." He also pledges to stop the research and deployment of a missile defense, the same system that Reagan created to end the Cold War.

America was led down this philosophical garden path most recently by Carter. Whether advocated by Carter in 1979, Chamberlain in 1939 or a President Obama in 2009, the philosophy behind this idea has simply never worked. Period. Yet , to borrow from Reagan's line in his debate with Carter, here we go again.

With all of the sweep of American history to look back on, with virtual libraries of history recording what works and what doesn't when running the American government, Obama has stunningly selected the Carter policies as his role model.

Tax cuts? Not for Obama. Military superiority? No, not for Obama. Do tax cuts work? Yes, as shown by Presidents Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43. Military strength? Yes, decisively too. From Lincoln's Union Army to Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet and his maxim to "talk softly and carry a big stick," from Wilson's Allied Expeditionary Force to FDR's vow to victory "so help us God" to Ronald Reagan's peace through strength, the idea of overwhelming military superiority works -- if the enemy believes you will use it. Or you actually use it.

But Obama, as with Carter, is having none of these approaches. From hiking Social Security payroll taxes to investing 20 percent less in defense budgets to telling Americans they had an "inordinate" fear of Communism, step by step Carter's policy selections and his decisions on the role of government led the American people down a dark and dangerous path that produced the worst economy since the Great Depression along with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a beachhead in Central America with the Communist take-over of Nicaragua. When his policy towards Iran resulted in abandoning the Shah in favor of the extremist mullahs and the taking of American hostages, Carter's military was in such bad shape that American soldiers died in the Iranian desert during a miserably failed rescue attempt.


PERHAPS MORE ASTONISHING than his advocacy of a return to Carterism, Obama channels the Republican president to whom Carter was frequently compared -- Herbert Hoover. Obama is completely on board with protectionism, seemingly oblivious to the lessons of the Smoot-Hawley tariff that was a product of the Hoover administration in 1930. Upping the tariff on some 20,000 goods it is famous forever as the disastrous idea that deepened the severity of the Great Depression.

One has to wonder about the survival prospects down the road for the Democrats. They either can't get elected because their ideas are so bad -- extremist or tried and true failures -- or every once in a good while the latest crowd of American voters actually forgets their history (or never learned it in the first place) and gives a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton a go at holding the reins. Enemies are then appeased, taxes raised, and judges go wild -- which in turn creates a new generation of conservatives who begin to understand why the last generation voted Republican.

The question for Senator McCain, accused by Obama of wanting to serve George W. Bush's third term, is whether he will hold Obama's feet to the fire on Obama's apparently passionate desire to serve Jimmy Carter's second.


Jeffrey Lord is the creator, co-founder and CEO of QubeTV, an online conservative video site. A Reagan White House political director and author, he writes from Pennsylvania.

Over A Barrel by Ariel Cohen

May 11, 2008 -- As you go deeper into debt filling up your tank with $4 gas this weekend, look on the bright side - you're helping to fund countries that hate you.
From Russia to Iran to Venezuela, America's adversaries are splurging on oil windfalls, while programs directed against Uncle Sam and his allies are funded by petroleum revenues. Big bucks are allowing the oil sultans and dictators to intimidate US allies, buy politicians and academics, and purchase election outcomes.

Oil prices are going up partly because of supply and speculation - but also because these countries can decide to punish the US or limit our influence, particularly when they disagree with policies toward Iraq and Israel.

Part of the reason they can do this is that governments of the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel, and the non-cartel producers like Russia, make sure that international oil companies do not own reserves in the ground. Exxon, for instance, spent only 4 percent of its exploration budget in the Middle East last year - local governments do not allow Western companies to take control of their own destiny.

Thus, the global oil production is at the mercy of opaque and corrupt national oil companies, while the governments that own them enjoy skyrocketing oil prices and the growing, mindboggling wealth.

The revenues of the major oil producing countries have quadrupled in three years. Since 9/11, oil prices have more than quintupled. This year Europe and the US will spend approximately $2 trillion on imported oil, while the world will spend close to $3 trillion.

This money recycles back to the US and the West, often in the most legitimate ways. Sovereign Investment Funds have acquired large chunks of America's financial flagships: Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone and the Carlyle Group.

A foreign government acquiring a serious stake in US corporate gems can influence US policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. The oil sheikhs can "tweak" attitudes towards extremism and terrorism, and buy access to politicians through lobbying and campaign contributions. In the future, these funds may acquire defense and technology flagships: Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin and others, or go after primary media assets, from CNN to FOX.


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However, oil revenues may be used in much more sinister ways. Money can buy nuclear weapons programs, ballistic missile arsenals, and other arms. It can also pay for terrorist armies.

Today's attempt to overthrow the pro-American government in Lebanon is bankrolled by Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly-owned Iranian subsidiary. Its chief has the official title of the "representative of Iran's Supreme Leader" in Lebanon. Iran paid for the 27,000 rockets Hezbollah has aimed at Israel.

Iran also buys Hamas weapons and popularity in Gaza. In a recent children's TV broadcast by Hamas' Al Aqsa TV, a "Hamasnik" boy is shown assassinating President George W. Bush in the Oval Office and declaring that the White House will be turned into a mosque. Money may not buy you love, but it sure pays for propaganda.

Al Jazeera, the Qatari Arabic and English language TV is a propaganda arm with global reach. Viciously anti-American, it talks to tens of millions of Arabic speaking Muslims worldwide, as well as audiences in Pakistan, India, London and Detroit.

Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Salafi-Jihadi ideology known as Wahhabism, is financing hundreds of religious seminaries (madrassahs), educating generations of US-hating and anti-Semitic Muslim extremists from Michigan to Manila. Some of them will pick up arms to fight the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wahhabis deny other religions the right to exist in dignity, as a recent religious ruling (fatwa) in Saudi Arabia demonstrated. Two journalists who argued for tolerance were sentenced to death.

In the US a majority of mosques partake of Saudi and Gulf largesse. The Saudis often provide religious leaders (imams), textbooks and curricula, to Muslim communities and schools. There is little to no control as far as the content of the teachings or school books, but a Freedom House study found that these are anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-American and anti-Israel.

Despite trips by President George Bush and Vice President Cheney, Saudi Arabia refuses to increase output - and why would they? They can use it as leverage to get their way, particularly in Israel.

Riyyadh also employs an army of lobbyists and other "influencers" in Washington, London, Brussels and elsewhere around the world. These shadow mercenaries promote a benign image for the Kingdom.

They appear on TV, write newspaper and journal articles, direct university programs on Islamic or Middle Eastern studies. Saudi princes have poured tens of millions into prestigious universities, from Georgetown and Harvard to Cambridge and Edinburgh.

Former senior government officials and ambassadors are on the royal payroll influencing their colleagues in the diplomatic service. This is how the Saudi "peace plan" calling for undermining Israel through a massive influx of Palestinian "refugees" received US support at the highest levels.

This is how the Carter Center in Atlanta ended up taking millions in Gulf oil money. This is why Jimmy Carter looks like he's shilling for the Iranian-Saudi client, Hamas.


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If all this were not enough, Hugo Chavez, the socialist-fascist ruler of Venezuela, is spending billions in dollar oil subsidies to assemble an empire of dependencies in Latin America. According to evidence on a laptop taken from a dead guerilla leader in the neighboring Ecuador, Chavez supports the FARC narco-guerillas who are attempting to overthrow the democratically-elected government of President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia.

Chavez, an ally of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, provides cheap oil and loans to Daniel Ortega and his wife, the Sandinista rulers of Nicaragua. Chavez also supports leftist leaders and forces in Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay. Their intent is to deny the US influence and allies in South America, and ease the way for an Iranian-Hezbollah penetration of the Southern Cone.

Russian leaders, more anti-American today than ever, have written the book on using money and energy muscle to buy friends and influence neighbors. They made an example out of Ukraine, by cutting gas supply to it on New Year's Day for four days.

They also intimidated France and Germany into bucking the US at the Bucharest NATO summit and objecting to Georgia and Ukraine being issued a North Atlantic Treaty Association membership plan.

Russia's Gazprom has hired former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder as the Chairman of a pipeline consortium, and made a similar offer to former Italian Prime Minister and the top Eurocrat Romano Prodi. Vladimir Putin does brisk energy business with Silvio Berlusconi, and with the French President Nicolas Sarcozy, though both are considered pro-American. German businessmen enthusiastically lobby Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Kremlin's behalf. Russia, some argue, has more clout today in Europe than Washington.

Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration.

To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up.

The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters.

World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of our nation. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in International Energy Security at The Heritage Foundation and the author of The Real World, a weekly column published in The Middle East Times.

Pearls of Wisdom

"Every time liberals raise taxes, they think the people they want to help will feel better because somebody's being gotten even with. The rich are going to suffer like you are? No. The rich will keep their jobs. You're going to get laid off."

Liberals stand up for principles, but they never stand up for people. People always suffer when liberalism succeeds -- and when people are suffering, I don't think you can shout the warning too loud that it needs to stop.

"We are sitting around and letting ever enlarging governments -- state, federal, local -- take away our freedom. When people are denied freedom, the results can be deadly. Just look at Burma." --Rush Limbaugh, 06 May 08