One thing about coattails, Obama has had long coattails ever since he gave that speech back in 2004. He has been stumping for candidates all over the nation, using his rock star status to help many, many democrats campaign and get elected.
Obama wants to raise taxes and end the war. McCain wants to lower taxes and stay at war.
Which candidate is going to bankrupt the government, again? I can’t even see how you’re convincing yourself of this nonsense, let alone any sort of arguments legitimately supporting your conclusions.
Carter didn’t believe in the political process. Rationality? Yes. Trading competing interests? Why do that? I’ve admired his post-Presidential life, but he was illustrative of the dangers of electing a non-politician to the political job.
There’s no danger that either candidate falls into the category of “non-politician”.
No doubt Carter had an impeccable grasp of the details of the rescue operation, and was involved in planning it, but nothing in your cite remotely comes close to supporting Sam Stone’s statement:
Like treis pointed out, your cite is a criticism of management style and has nothing of merit to indicate that the rescue mission failed because of Carter’s involvement.
I can only read so much of your cite, but I did get a tone of nastiness from it. So Clinton and Carter wanted all available info before making a decision. Their critics label that as indecision. Well, recent history has shown that a dogmatic, shoot from the hip, don’t confuse me with the facts, management style is far worse.
Well, sure, you can call micro-management and paralysis by detail a “management style” if you like. Didn’t seem to work out too terribly well for Mr. Peanut, though.
Not sure if Obama would turn out to be that kind of a failure, just a different kind. Carter thought being President was like being governor of Georgia, only more so. And he got bogged down in minutiae mostly as a result of that.
Also because managing the tennis courts was all that he could actually seem to affect. He went on TV and put on a sweater, and still the energy crisis didn’t go away. He issued a whole bunch of increasing detailed orders, and still the rescue operation failed. He scolded the American people about not being more cheerful about the economy, and still the misery index went up.
Obama doesn’t even have that much experience to draw on. I get the feeling that he will expect to be swept into office, send a whole bunch of legislation to Congress, and expect them to be passed immediately and all our problems go away.
Which is naive, but what do you expect from someone like that?
It’s just hard on the country when our Chief Executive’s first encounter with political reality comes in the Oval Office.
If Palin gets in ,we would have another outsider with the attitude that she can fix all the ills with her deep knowledge of things religious and Alaskan. Washington would crush her.
However, until you can pony up a cite indicating micromanaging as a cause for the failure of the rescue operation this particular train of thought is nothing more than a load of shit.
It’s quite presumptuous of you to go on like that. It’s also quite naive of you to think that a guy that has gone through as grueling of a campaign as he’s been through is naive about the political process.
I had heard the same thing but it just is not true. The mission was a cluster fuck to be sure but not because Carter was micromanaging from the White House.
But the point is being missed. Carter encouraged us to lower our thermostats and put on sweaters to save energy. Such a policy works. As does Obama’s statement re inflating your tires–it’s something everyone can do, conserves gas and is simple and easily done.
Why these things are mocked by Reps (and McCain re the tires) escapes me. If they were the ONLY things these men suggested or backed in terms of energy policy, I’d tend to look at them funny. But they’re not.
To point to a different area, the duct tape and plastic sheeting sure didn’t make me sleep better o’ nights… but of course, we have this great big war in a country that was our ally due to the dictator we helped into power and now hates us, plus I can’t retire until I’m 75 or so now because my IRA is more like a piggy bank, so that makes me sleep much, much better.
Carter has been a brilliant ex-President. I think he should have been a pastor or a theologian. He’s one of the few religious people I can stand to listen to–he tends to walk the walk. I was a kid when he was President. Mostly what I remember is the energy crisis, OPEC and Jimmy Beer.
So anyone who has gone thru a grueling campaign is qualified to understand the legislative process? Interesting point, but a bit incoherent.
:shrugs:
Read the cites. Even the decision to abort had to be relayed back to Washingon. Carter wanted to know if the perimeter guards at the embassy were recruits or volunteers. If they were volunteers, he was willing to kill them. If they were recruits, he wanted them to be knocked out.
The mission did not fail due to any of that. Read my cite above.
Had they made it to the embassy and it all went south while they tried to knock out guards instead of killing them or somesuch then you might have something. As it was the thing went south due to a string of unfortunate occurrences (helicopters breaking down/malfunctioning, radio silence, sand storm, helicopter landing on a plane, etc.). Carter had nothing to do with any of all that except to approve the cancellation of the mission by a request from the commander on the ground.