Monday, July 20, 2009

'What's Next Mr. President —Cardigans?'   [Veronique de Rugy]

Reason's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch had a great article about the Obama administration in yesterday's Washington Post. The two writers predict a Carterian cardigan in President Obama's future.

So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il's health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America's best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party's left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP.

And perhaps most important, as with Carter, his specific policies are genuinely unpopular. The auto bailout — which, incidentally, is illegal, springing as it has from a fund specifically earmarked for financial institutions — has been reviled from the get-go, with opposition consistently polling north of 60 percent. Majorities have said no to bank bailouts and to cap and trade if it would make electricity significantly more expensive.

The only question that remains is: By comparing Obama to Carter, are they being unfair to Carter?

Read the whole thing here.

07/20 10:41 AMShare