By Lee Cole–

“The president has no record to run on. In fact every president since the Great Depression who asked Americans to send them in to a second term could say that you were better off than you were four years ago except for Jimmy Carter and President Barack Obama.” – Paul Ryan


A Newsweek poll from earlier this year had likely voters ranking President Obama as the second worse president of all time, behind Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.  Perhaps it was this poll that Paul Ryan seized on when he likened Obama to Jimmy Carter, just before the start of the Democratic National Convention.  Whatever the case, both Ryan’s claim and the poll rankings are frankly absurd.  If anything, President Obama is the new Bill Clinton or, better yet the new Kennedy.  The comparison to Carter simply doesn’t hold up under closerscrutiny.

Former presidents have been making the news lately.  President Clinton gave a rousing 48 minute speech at the DNC Wednesday night, making for one of the most effective political communications of the campaign so far.  Clinton outlined a detailed appraisal of Obama’s policies, going on to offer a point by point, impassioned call for his reelection.  There was an urgency to Clinton’s speech, as if he realized this week, along with the other delegates and attendees that no matter how you look at it, this election will be close, and all that the Democrats worked for may be lost.

While the Republican convention in Tampa was the very essence of milquetoast political cliché and faux blue collar pride – just imagine Mitt Romney as a salt of the earth, blue collar type – the democrats managed to combine informative, almost professorial, explications of complicated issues with emotional, impassioned pleas for continuing the work Obama began four years ago.  Clinton’s speech inspired many to tears and bolstered the party with newfound enthusiasm and resoluteness.  Romney’s speech contained about as much enthusiasm as a root canal procedure.

In a mostly unnoticed segment on Tuesday, Jimmy Carter addressed the DNC via prerecorded video.  He was not given a primetime spot, most likely because of enduring unpopularity among conservatives and his association with a bad presidency.  Carter’s presidency certainly was spectacular, but to say it was the worst of all time is a gross exaggeration and willful ignorance of history.  What about James Buchanan?  Or George W. Bush, the man almost singlehandedly responsible for a war that killed thousands – hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – and was predicated on a lie?

Maybe the Obama/Carter comparison would hold more weight had the bin Laden raid failed.  When the helicopter crashed and our attempts to end the Iran hostage crisis failed miserably, Jimmy Carter’s presidency was forever marred.  Republican presidents can bluster and blunder about in foreign wars all they please, but Democrats are not afforded the same right.  It’s as if whenever Democrats become engaged in a military skirmish of any kind, like Clinton in Eastern Europe or Carter in Iran, Republicans are personally offended.  Their thought process must go something like “What’s this nonsense? We’re the only ones allowed to receive military glory! We’re the only ones allowed to dress up in flight suits on aircraft carriers and play soldier in front of a giant banner!”  They must have been terribly upset when Obama, the man who they decried as having no foreign policy experience, brought to justice the most wanted man in the world.

Democratic presidents, especially Carter, are seen as meek and squeamish when it comes to military conflict.  This was the narrative McCain tried to sell in 2008: Obama would be a foreign policy disaster.  The irony is that Obama has been one of the greatest military presidents in our history, navigating a safe exit strategy for Iraq, killing over 25 of Al Qaeda’s top leaders including Osama bin Laden, dismantling dictatorships with his army of drones (robotic, unmanned aircraft) and crippling the Iranian nuclear program with a volley of cyber attacks.  Obama is like a futuristic George Washington, except cooler because he can kill you with robots seemingly at any moment if you’re an enemy of America.

The sad fact behind the Newsweek poll is that it is largely based on an imaginary Barack Obama, sold to the public by Romney and Fox News.  It will be many years, no doubt before the Obama presidency receives its due credit.  The hatred for him transcends mere racism or xenophobia.  It’s not so much that he’s liberal or black or has a foreign name, but rather it’s all these things combined.  Conservatives hate Obama because all of those things fall under the category “not like me.”

The only reason Clinton fared a little better is that he has a southern accent.  What does it say about our country that the only Democratic presidents we’ve elected in the past 40 years have to have southern accents and impress upon the public how important their Christian faith is to them?  It’s almost as if the voting public decreed in 1970 “Well, I suppose we can vote for a Democrat if the prior Republican president does a particularly horrible job, but he better seem like a good ole’ country boy.”  Imagine someone like Gavin Newsom running, a truly bold liberal from San Francisco who’s not afraid to describe himself as left-leaning and is in fact proud of it.  Why is it that the phrase “true conservative” is touted and heralded as a compliment, but Obama or other Democrats could never get away with calling themselves “true liberals?”

The reason, I suspect, is that the word liberal has become permanently pejorative.  It is now synonymous with commie, pinko, atheist, gay-supporting, tofu-eating, hand-out giving and abortion-loving.  We need to reclaim the word this election and use it with pride.  The next time someone calls Obama a weak, Jimmy Carter-esque liberal, remind them that Obama has an army of robots.

Photos courtesy Anglonauts.org and businessinsider.com