What to do with Jimmy Carter? I don’t know. I didn’t see the Democratic Convention video of him interviewing New Orleanians last night, but I assume it was pretty good.
Republicans like to slag on Carter, and they havecompared Barack Obama to Carter during the campaign. This linkage is sort of useful, actually, because you wouldn’t believe how many conservatives think that they need to suffer through another “Carter” before the country will be ready to elect the“next Ronald Reagan”. Operating under that assumption, conservatives will be much less willing to hold their nose for McCain this election if they think there is some strategic, long-term benefit in having a “Carter-esque” Democrat elected. And that’s fine. I won’t disabuse them of their “ultra-strategic” political history models.
However, in the meantime, could Democratic talking heads please rememberone little talking point about Carter that stops conservatives in their tracks? I mean, it stops them cold. Seriously, you want to see a confused Gooper?– well, after they complain about the “malaise” of the Carter years, and how Obama will be “Carter’s second term”, hit them with this:
Over 10 million net jobs were created during Carter’s four year term, compared with only (about) 5 million during Dubya’s two terms. Why does the so-called “Bush Boom” compare so disfavorably to the so-called “Carter malaise”, in terms of net job growth?
Let’ em chew on that packet of butterscotch for a little while.
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Further, more jobs were created during Carter’s four years than in either of Reagan’s terms. And if we’re gonna talk Democratic Presidents and net job growth, we’d be remiss not to mention the 23 million jobs created during the eight year Clinton administration. If you combine the net job totals under Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43… you get approximately the same total! So, twenty years of GOP presidents created roughly the same number of jobs that Clinton did in eight.
Hmm. But we don’t hear those facts very often, do we?