WILL OBAMA BECOME JIMMY CARTER?

Last week Jimmy Carter took time off from his ongoing campaign to redeem his failed presidency to scold Americans for being racist in their opposition to President Obama’s struggling health care reform efforts. Like just about everything else Carter has said or done in the last 40 years, he’s dead wrong on that one too. But his re-emergence, however brief, got me seeing some unnerving parallels between the worst president of the 20th century and our current president, the man so many people hope will be one of the great ones.
Jimmy Carter has made a career of denigrating and apologizing for the American way of life. In his world there is no bright line separating right from wrong or friend from foe. Whether it’s sitting down with North Korean despots or selling out our Israeli allies in the Middle East, Carter’s always been in the blame America first game. That’s his call and thankfully the American people had the good sense to send him packing in 1980 ushering in the Age of Reagan. His opinion counts for very little these days and no amount of photo-ops with Habitat for Humanity is going to change the fact he was a disaster as President.
What does concern me are the early indications that President Obama is going down that same apologist path. It began shortly after the inauguration when Obama went on what many saw as a world apology tour. American resolve and national security initiatives were interpreted as colonialist oppression. By about April, I was pretty sure I was hearing the faintest hint of a French accent in our new President.
On the domestic front, Obama is listing left as he attempts to spend and legislate the country out of economic trouble. He sees no problem having the government own or control the means of production, making private citizens defacto government employees. If the federal government owns the banks, auto companies and other key industries, how does that make us much different from Cuba? I wonder if Fidel and his brother Raoul have thought about a “cash for clunkers” program, given Cuba hasn’t produced a new car since Castro socialist regime took over. Maybe Obama could sell them some GM cars with Jimmy Carter as the TV pitchman.
But let’s get back to national security and the Obama administrations new pantywaist policy decisions. Let’s start with Attorney General Eric Holder and his insane decision to investigate and potentially prosecute CIA intelligence officers for possible harsh treatment of terrorist detainees. Let’s even concede some of these interrogations went a little old school on us and involved knocking some of these guys around. Given we know these interrogations saved countless lives here and abroad, we should be handing out medals not subpoenas. The effect this will have on the military and intelligence community will be catastrophic and long-lasting.
Carter had a similar attitude toward the military. He actually discouraged military brass at the Pentagon from wearing their uniforms as a way of downplaying American power to visitors. When Reagan was made aware of this on his first visit to the Pentagon as president, he immediately ordered all personnel into full uniform and legend has it grown men cried that day in the halls.
Now comes yet another indication that Obama feels we haven’t sent enough conciliatory signals to the people who hate us and our way of life. Remember Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber. He’s the reprobate who tried to blow up a Miami-bound American Airlines flight on Dec. 22, 2001. Merry Christmas! Fortunately Reid was thwarted by crew and passengers as he attempted to light a fuse connected to powerful explosives in his shoe. After six years of harsh isolation, the Obama Justice Department has ordered the British-born terrorist be allowed to associate and pray with fellow jailed Muslims. One of the flight attendants, Hermis Moutardier, who helped subdue Reid said simply “What’s wrong with our system?”
What’s wrong, indeed? Our government has the right and the obligation to keep us safe from enemies foreign and domestic. We shouldn’t be in the business of appeasing our enemies by prosecuting the CIA or having Richard Reid high-stepping it around the prison yard with his al-Qaeda home boys. Obama seems to be following the Jimmy Carter business model and if he is, he could be a one term wonder too.