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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jonah Goldberg
"Surely the Lord sent Jimmy Carter," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s father proclaimed at the 1976 Democratic convention, "to come on out and bring America back where she belongs."
Carter campaigned on his personal religiosity far more than any other president since World War II. In an interview with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Carter explained that "secular law is compatible with God's laws," but if the two were in conflict, "we should honor God's law." Robertson endorsed Carter. So did Lou Sheldon of the
Though it is hard to fathom today, given that Carter is one of the dullest personalities in American public life (and ranks high on the all-time dull list for carbon-based life forms generally), there was a time when he was seen as a deeply charismatic figure. One of his aides privately urged him in a memo to "capitalize on your greatest asset -- your personal charm."
In an article partially headlined, "On Carter: 'Country is Ready' for the Hope He Stirs,"
It was not to be. The liberals left him in the primary for Ted Kennedy. The evangelicals and the Southerners left him in the fall for Ronald Reagan. If the Lord had sent Carter, it was to set the stage for the Reagan revolution.
The Carter presidency failed and his coalition dissipated because you can't hold a coalition together with personality alone. You need to actually govern in a way that satisfies your constituency.
"The New Deal coalition is called the 'New Deal coalition' and not the 'Great Depression coalition' for a reason," says political analyst Jay Cost. FDR offered a winning political program. Carter offered sanctimony, arrogance and the sense that he bit off more than he could handle.
If the name Barack Obama hasn't sprung to mind yet, you must be staying in the same bunker where much of the Democratic leadership is holed up.
Obama's campaign was Carteresque on several fronts. The consummate outsider, Obama promised a transformational presidency, a new accommodation with religion, a new centrism, a changed tone. And there was no shortage of conjecture that Obama -- a.k.a. "the one" -- was sent by the Lord to his chosen people, "the ones we've been waiting for."
The Carter-Obama comparison is not new. Rich Lowry of the
But, like Carter, Obama hasn't governed in a way that has held his coalition together.
After the 2008 election, various liberal pundits insisted that Obama's personal popularity would bring about a sea change and a "new liberal order," in the words of Peter Beinart in
That's all somewhere between dubious and ludicrous now. As the
Available at Amazon.com:
Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future
The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
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