WASHINGTON -- Who on August 18, 2010 --almost one year ago -- said, "I now think it is clear even to Official Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed"? Yes, it was I, and I threw the entire weight of The American Spectator behind that asseveration, putting both Jimmy and Barry on the cover. Now, of course, others are stepping forward and drawing the awkward comparison. On the left there is Maureen Dowd in the New York Times quoting an anonymous Democratic senator, who laments that "we are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes." Apparently the same comparison has been made by the left-wing fussbudget Eric Alterman in U.S. News. Yet I went further, making the point that between Barry and Jimmy, Barry is worse. Consider the Prophet's performance on the tube during this financial crisis. He is actually calling for more spending, and the markets continue to tumble. His fabled cool is exposed. It is obliviousness.
Columnists William McGurn and Bret Stephens make similar comparisons on the same day, August 8, 2011, and in the same newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Stephens is bold: "I just think the president is not very bright." He quotes Socrates, Aristotle, and Plutarch respectively on wisdom, prudence, and the costs of flattery. McGurn has an eye to history. He reminds us of the extravagant statements made about Carter's genius over thirty years ago by New York Times columnists Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis, R. W. Apple, and the author Norman Mailer in the Times magazine. It really is astonishing how these oafs fell for a Liberal Democrat's claim to high intelligence even as they dismissed a conservative Republican as simple-minded while he ended the Cold War and set the American economy on course for the longest period of growth in modern history. I have in mind Ronald Reagan.
Stephens quotes President Obama as saying to an aide in 2008, "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm… a better political director than my political director." Obama's vanity Stephens excuses as but an echo of the balderdash said about him by his admirers. I know what he means. There is the "presidential historian" Michael Beschloss telling radio host Don Imus that Obama "is a guy whose IQ is off the charts…." Asked for evidence, Beschloss confides, "he's probably the smartest guy ever to become president." And of course a media "presidential historian" would know.
My favorite panegyric to Obama comes from the Times's columnist David Brooks, recalling his first interview with then Senator Obama. "I don't want to sound like I'm bragging," says Brooks, "but usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don't know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense that he knew both better than me." Brooks went on to make this invaluable observation, "I remember distinctly an image -- we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I'm thinking, (a) he's going to be president and (b) he'll be a very good president." What would this precious Washington insider have reported if Senator Obama had been wearing pantyhose?
For over thirty years a wounded Jimmy Carter has roamed the world speaking ill of whomever the sitting president might be and occasionally making it difficult for that president to make policy. Obama has already surpassed him, speaking ill of America as a whole while being president. In Strasbourg, France, on April 3, 2009, he said, "Instead of celebrating our dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." What he will do in retirement one can only imagine. But until his retirement, enjoy the show.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. His new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, was published on April 20 by Thomas Nelson. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn't Work: Social Democracy's Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; and The Clinton Crack-Up.
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