Obama's Need for a Loyal Caucus

RCP ^ | May 29th, 2008 | David Broder

[The_Republican]

A year after Jimmy Carter lost his re-election race to Ronald Reagan, Hamilton Jordan, his former White House chief of staff, sat down for a lengthy interview with scholars at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Last week, after hearing the news of Jordan's death, friends at the center sent me a transcript of that 27-year-old interview. As they predicted, it was of intense interest for current politics, and particularly on the challenge facing Barack Obama.

The main theme of Jordan's interview was this intriguing observation: "Only because of the fragmentation that had taken place" in the Democratic Party and its allied groups was Carter able to be nominated and elected in 1976. But that same fragmentation made the challenge of governing so difficult that he was almost doomed to fail.

What he meant was this: In the two previous elections, the Democratic Party was riven by strife over the Vietnam War, social policy and civil rights. It was bitterly divided by the nomination of Hubert Humphrey over Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and of George McGovern over Humphrey and other challengers in 1972. In 1974, after Watergate ended the Republican revival, the old-guard Democrats suddenly confronted an influx of reform-minded new faces in Congress.

It was in the resulting "chaos," as he called it, that Jordan conceived the possibility of making the one-term governor of Georgia the next president. The "fragmentation" they discovered was real, not metaphorical. Carter won the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary with less than 30 percent of the votes, as four more-liberal contenders -- Morris Udall, Birch Bayh, Fred Harris and Sargent Shriver -- split up the rest.

But once Carter was in the White House, the liberals who controlled Congress quickly took his measure.

[Dawnsblood]

as four more-liberal contenders

I really do not know much about any of them but it really scares me that they could find 4 people to the left of Carter to contend for the nomination. Scary stuff!

[rockinqsranch]

Is it just me or is there much missing from this analysis of Broder’s?

[Redbob]

“Fragmentation” didn’t have anything to do with it; Carter was a nitwit, and Dims love nitwits.
He was as close as they could get to a human who personified their party symbol - the jackass.

[Atchafalaya]

If he is elected, Pelosi and Reid will set the agenda; Bambi will just sign the bills as they cross his desk with great regularity.

[seoul62]

Oy vey the agita!!!!!, the nightmare for me is his hands anywhere near the nuclear suitcase and his bruja wife’s personality is a double turnoff for me./Just Asking - seoul62..........

[Wiseghy]

As I recall, Carter ran as a moderate. He was “a Christian”, from a conservative, bible thumping state. He seemed genuine, sincere, honest and tad naive, as seen in his infamous Playboy interview. The country wanted a fresh, honest face after the trama of Watergate. I didn’t vote for him, but those are my recollections of how the press presented him.

I liked Broder’s comparison at first, but there was no complex excuse for the purely muddled, incompetent leadership of Carter. He was a detail guy in way over his head. We all paid a very steep price for it.

Most people today simply would not believe how bad the economy was then, or the Armed Forces or taxes or foriegn policy or the American Spirit overall. Even liberals dismissed him. It was a depression with no unity and no “new deal”.
I gotta quit writing about this. That’s how bad it was.

[Enchante]

Carter pretended to be moderate and rational - compared to a lot of the Demagogue candidates in ‘76 (or any year in recent decades) Carter did not wear his leftism as much on his sleeve in the campaign IIRC. Since I was only in high school I did not pay huge attention to it all but I do remember thinking that Carter was the “centrist” of the Demagogues. That didn’t last too long once he was in office.

[TomasUSMC]

http://larrysinclair0926.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/lets-make-some-noise-live-from-dc-pt-1/#comment-18104

Larry Sinclair is in D.C.

obsamaites are gonna go nuts

[Caipirabob]

I pretty much thought he had his main constituency solidly sewn up...

[Atchafalaya]

I got another nightmare for you; if he is elected and the Dems do as well as they are expecting, I would not be surprised at all to see them try to nationalize the oil industry during his first term.

[seoul62]

We had a taste of what was to come with Mad Maxine’s outburst at the Shell Chairman. Americans wake up before it is too late. If they take over, God help us all./Just Asking - seoul62.......

[Atchafalaya]

You caught that too, I hope everyone here is aware of what Waters was suggesting. I was watching Cavuto last Wed., and he had on some endless loop Dem. talking headess, and during her droning talk-over of Cavuto she mentioned - why not nationalize the oil companies. Whether Neil didn't hear the comment because he was really trying to express his point (why not add drilling to all the other Dem energy alternatives -wind, solar, flatulence...) or he chose to ignore it, I don't know. I don't think he heard it because I can't see him letting that pass. It would really fit in with the progressive mind set; if you control energy and with it health care (when that passes), you have the great unwashed by the scrotioids, and once passed there is no going back.

[seoul62]

People of America, especially Whitey - in her vernacular, have got to wake up, and take Mad Maxine for what she says. She is not some wacked out sister from the hood but a militant marxist who has plans to shape America to a marxist utopia. Wake up America, the chickens.....are coming.....home to roost./Just Asking - seoul62.......