To some, said Tulane University political scientist Thomas Langston, Obama is like Jimmy Carter, and the nation will soon hammer the nails into the coffin of a dying Democratic coalition just as voters, tired of the Carter "malaise" era, handed the White House to Republicans in 1980...
Carter, like Obama, learned the ropes in a state Senate. Critics accused Carter of being inexperienced, having served one term as the governor of Georgia. But the Democratic candidate presented himself as a politician outside of politics and a reformer uninterested in partisan games...
The comparison to Carter, Gergen said, is more of a danger sign for Obama than it is a reality because it shows how the storyline has changed.
Source: CNN.com
So the article is actually a little less biased than all that. It goes on to compare Obama to Reagan, elaborating the positive qualities of that presidency. Yet if I could, I would like to argue the whole Carter = Obama comparison.
Obama's current term is not even 1/4 of the way over. Therefore, it still may be too early to make an adequate judgement on his performance.
Like Carter, he has been hampered with this share of national crises, but so far he is not "holed up" in the White House like a frightened door mouse. In fact, he and the First Lady have been busy on the late night talk show circuit, still talking to the casual ear of the American people.
This, of course, shows one of the primary strategies that Obama has over Carter, in that he is not shy about using the national media. Like some kind of post-modern Eve Peron, he's managed to use Television, Radio, print and the Net to recruit his "cult of personality" and create an Obama brand name.
This, of course, is the Philosophy that Neo-Liberal corporations have been using for years: transcending something like a presidential administration to the level of religious fervor. The difference being that this time, that Philosophy is being used for a somewhat noble purpose and not to sell a new brand of Pepsi.
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