The Obama Administration: Jimmy Carter Redux...on Steroids

Will Malven
2/13/2009

With President Obama, the comparisons to the failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter are becoming easier and easier. I have made that comparison many times, even when struggling to find something optimistic and positive to say about our new President as in this editorial, Obama Set to Disappoint Extreme Left.

Unfortunately in my past few editorials about the Obama Administration (including the one linked to above), I have underestimated our new President's dedication to the Marxist ideals which characterized and pervaded his upbringing. President Obama's move to the Left has been Mercurial and resolute. He is rapidly demonstrating that my original estimate of his politics was correct...he is a dedicated Marxist who believes that all answers to our problems can be best solved by the state, not the private sector.

What is now becoming increasingly clear about the Obama Administration as it begins to take shape is it's frighteningly similar appearance to that of President "Malaise" Carter's.

The single greatest contributor to the Carter Administration was President Carter's arrogance. Like most Liberal elitists, Carter believed himself to be the smartest person in the room. He believed that he needed to be involved in every decision coming out of his administration. Obama exudes that same arrogance.

Carter was a "micro-manager" and as a result, every policy coming out of his White House had to have his personal imprimatur stamped on it. Carter was constitutionally incapable of delegating responsibility. This kind of micromanagement is based on mistrust and arrogance; mistrust of his chosen advisors and appointees, and arrogance that only he was capable of making important decisions.

This same paradigm is now beginning to take shape inside the Obama White House. With President Obama's closest advisors being granted extra-constitutional powers which exceed those of his cabinet appointees. These extra-constitutional power brokers, which he has labeled czars, do not bear the Congressional stamp of approval the way that Cabinet Secretaries do. Thus the White House will more resemble a monarchy than a republican presidency.

Karl Rove, "The Architect," has written an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal which appeared yesterday, in which he describes the mess which is beginning to metastasize within the West Wing of the White House.

The Obama White House May Be a Crowded Mess
There will be four people in my old office

Wall Street Journal/Opinion Journal
JANUARY 28, 2009, 11:25 P.M. ET

By KARL ROVE

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama criticized Washington for being "obsessed with
the perpetual campaign." As president he is the first occupant of the Oval Office to give his director of political affairs -- who coordinates the president's involvement with his party and other campaign related activities -- an office in the West Wing.

Many Americans may assume that the president's entire staff is in the West Wing. It's not. The West Wing is actually a very small place, so the vast number of people who work "at the White House" actually have offices across the street at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB).

Under Mr. Obama, the political director won't be in the EEOB, where other presidents have placed him. He'll occupy a West Wing office usually given to the head of presidential personnel. That's a sign of the importance of politics for Team Obama.

This is one of many of Mr. Obama's changes to the management structure of the White House that will likely undermine his stated aims and create a more centralized and possibly incoherent policy process.

Rove goes on to describe how every move Obama is making further centralizes power in the White House and away from the agencies which normally execute policy and make most policy decisions-always with White House approval, of course.

President Obama is setting himself up to micromanage our government just as President Jimmy Carter did. He will get precisely the same results Carter got...a dismal failure.

This monarchical presidency paradigm will be combined with President Obama's Marxist economic policies like his $800 billion "stimulus" package (read spending bill) will result in a prolonged recession, double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, and eventually double digit interest rates.

As soon as this monstrosity of a spending bill hits the markets with its full impact, inflation will start in earnest as the government is forced to print fiat money to cover the spending.

With China nearing its own economic disaster, it will cease to buy our debt; Japan already in its own economic crisis, and Great (or used to be Great) Britain in an economic downturn equal to or surpassing our own, there will be no buyers for the treasury bills congress Democrats intended to use to finance this boondoggle. As a result of these markets for our debt drying up, the only alternative for our government is printing money.

As to Carter's foreign policy failures, they were legion: the Panama Canal fiasco, the Iranian hostage fiasco, his complicity in the deposition of the Shah of Iran (a strong American ally) and the ascension of Ayatollah Khomeini (directly leading to the Iranian Islamic Republic), the failed rescue attempt of the American hostages in Iran, his resolute dislike for Israel, his support of the Sandinista Revolutionaries and opposition to the Contras; the list is impressive.

Even his most touted accomplishment, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed at Camp David in 1979, was accomplished in spite of his efforts (Carter only wanted an agreement that included all of the nations hostile toward Israel and opposed the efforts of Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, only jumping in at the last moment to grab some of the glory).

Obama has made a great start in duplicating Carter's failures with his closing of Gitmo (Guantanamo), his insistence on using the Army Field Manual as the definitive instruction for the interrogation of prisoners, the end of rendition, his insistence on ending the war in Iraq in 16 months, giving his first press interview with El Arabia, his overtures of talks without preconditions with Iran; it has been an inauspicious beginning. Right up Carter's alley.

The real source of this kind of arrogance is always insecurity and ignorance and Obama, like Carter, has them both in spades

Get ready for Carter redux...on steroids.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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