The zealotry continues today and yesterday from what I earlier noted last week. This is yet another reason you shouldn't open your mouth to defend something if you don't know what you're talking about. On FriendFeed, "nicerobot" has been vehemently defending the presidency of Jimmy Carter, while at the same time relentlessly attacking the presidency of George W. Bush.
In one posting, nicerobot says:
I just never saw [Carter's presidency] as bad as people have claimed. Like I said, He wasn't good, but he wasn't bad. GW, to me, is bad, bad, bad. To me, there is a huge difference in the actions GW is responsible for which make him bad and the issues Carter had which, to me, are what made him appear bad. Simply: GW's actions are bad. Carters reactions were poor.
I'd really love for someone to explain to me the difference between bad actions and poor reactions. Aside from the semantic, when you're in the slot of the presidency, and you have a track record for either one, the culpability and net effect is the same.
Carter has been one of the nation's worst presidents, and George Bush has been giving him a run for his money in terms of fiscal irresponsibility and public relations.
President Carter took many non-issues during his presidency and turned them into a set of crisis on an international scale. President Bush took catastrophic circumstances and used them to further his own political ends.
When the nation needed to be jarred out of a funk, President Carter told the nation how depressed it was acting, and as a punishment they wouldn't be allowed to go on vacations (see: "The Malaise Speech"). President Bush, in the face of national crises and mourning, gave a great pep talk, and then while we were distracted, slipped the knife into our backs over basic privacy rights.
There have been hundreds more major failings in both presidential terms, and I think a strong case can be made for either the position that it comes from malevolent intent or sheer incompetence.
The point that absolutely can't be made is that one president is somehow less culpable than the other. If the president (in this case, Carter) can't be held accountable for how he handles events that affect the course of the nation, then President Bush can't be "bad, bad, bad."
Why is this important? Because a strong comparison is being drawn by Republicans and Democrats alike that Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter II. They're both political outsiders, they both promise change, but offer very little substantive change in their platforms, and are both highly inexperienced.
Democrats and Obama-nuts alike find themselves in the unenviable position now of defending one of America's worst presidents in history.