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Originally Posted by Goshin
I was wondering if people could fill me in on what did jimmy carter do that made him a bad president. and what is it about barrack Obama that makes people think he would be like jimmy carter? why can't he be like bill Clinton?
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Jimmy Carter was the eternal soft-spoken Democrat that did everything in his power to stay diplomatic with the country and the world. He, in many respects, was not a bad President, though he was often viewed as being slightly weak-willed, though that caricature is somewhat exaggerated. It's just that his Presidency was marred by all of the political waste that Nixon and Ford left in the White House as well as constant world strife: stagflation, an extreme energy crisis, Iran Hostage crisis (created in part due to the increased presence of America in the Middle East as a peace keeping force while helping with the Israel/Egypt alliance and then later the Afghanistan conflict), a crisis of confidence (created due to a constant string of Presidential problems (JFK assassination, Watergate, Vietnam War, etc)), a general disdain from the right for enacting so many equal liberties policies (this could be the reason that Neo-Cons have labeled Obama a recreation of Carter), starting the withdrawal from South America (which the right hated), the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (which, again, the right hated, and since Obama wants to get rid of even more Nuclear weapons, the neo-cons probably use this a reference point), and so much more.
It is kind of ironic that the main reaosn that Obama and Carter are compared to each other is the fact that both had to clean up the mess of a Republican president, all the while dealing with constant world strife.