Glenn Harlan Reynolds (via Gin and Tacos) in an op-ed that was published the day Obama announced that bin Laden had been killed:
Meanwhile, on foreign policy – another Carter weak point – Obama also looks worse. Carter blew it with Iran, encouraging the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks, while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s radical Islamists (whom Carter thought of as “reformers”) took power, and then approved the ill-conceived hostage rescue mission that ended with ignominious failure in the desert. Obama, by contrast, could only wish for such success.
G&T also asks the following question:
Can you imagine how many times George Will has been taunted for having written “Liberalization is a ploy…the Wall will remain” on Nov. 9, 1989 – the day the Berlin Wall came down?
The answer is, of course, “not many”, George Will is a serious person who had serious reasons for making that prediction.
Hill Dweller
I love reading this kind of shit in the post-OBL era. Over at Benen’s site he posted a Boehner quote from before the OBL operation lecturing Obama on seriousness. It’s all hilarious in hindsight.
gex
I wish I could be so spectacularly incompetent at my job, yet still get paid the big bucks.
ETA: I suppose this is a thing that only happens if you are a lackey for the powers that be.
MikeJ
And the serious reason for making that prediction was that he thought it would harm his political enemies. He didn’t care if it was true or not, if it would help or hurt the United States, or if it was good or bad for people living in East Germany. Only that he had political points to make and not Gorbachev, God, or anyone was going to stand in the way.
Zifnab
In all fairness, there’s a fair bit of space between Glenn Reynolds and George Will, if only because Will is an old school serious-person neocon of the Reagen/Bush Sr school and Reynolds is one of those crazy upstart bloggers that need to be shown his place.
I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen Reynolds on a Sunday Morning show, but Will is reliably up there every week.
Nom de Plume
George Will is a serious person who had serious reasons for making that prediction.
Pat Buchanan too. I recall an op-ed from him at about the very same time, gleeful in proclaiming that the Soviet Union wasn’t going anywhere.
Nothing ever happens to these people.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
It’s more fun to taunt George Will over his thesis that the fall of society is tied to the rise of blue-jeans.
Scott P.
Anyone have a cite (newspaper and date) for that Will column?
kd bart
I remember during the run of The McClaughlin Group, John McClaughlin would pronounce every six months or so that Fidel Castro would soon be out of power in Cuba.
Joe Beese
“… for each generation, America is a very different place, and the America we lost on 9/11 — the America that didn’t profile citizens, torture people, or monitor their phone calls — isn’t even a distant memory for the children and teenagers of today’s America.
In a sense, you could call this evidence of bin Laden’s victory; our children might forget his name, but they’ll grow up in a country shaped by his actions.”
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=05&year=2011&base_name=the_mystery_of_osama_bin_laden
kindness
On heads exploding….I was over at Jesus’ General and saw the link he had to Pam Geller’s site ( “Skulking Towards bin Laden: Obama Overridden by Military and Intel Officials in Takeout of OBL?” )
where she suggests there was a military coup here in the US where the generals over-ruled Obama who tried to stop the operation.
Seriously? Seriously.
And this is a person the NY Times Magazine did a full spread on a few weeks ago? WTF has happened to our media? Granted, she is an outlier, but why are these neanderthal outliers getting any press (other than being pointed and laughed at) at all? Got me. Go read the comments for additional head exploding.
Jay C
What you said: while I believe Kreskin is quite correct – or should be quite correct when he says:
It’s only true for a limited subset of predictors. If you’re some scruffy low blogger, no one cares about your accuracy, since who reads scruffy low blogs? And if you’re a Serious Pundit penning Serious Seriousness for the MSM; well, most people will forget the howlers, anyway.
However, his characterization of Glenn Reynolds as “Ol’ Perfesser Dunbass” IS spot-on; no clarification needed.
PS
@Scott P.: I just searched the WashPo site, and there is precisely one result for [Liberalization is a ploy the Wall will remain] (not in quotes or brackets): George F. Will, Emptying of the East, Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1989. Most of the column is behind a paywall, but the excerpt ends, tantalizingly: “The Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.”
So I think we can conclude that the much-quoted line is for real.
PS
@Scott P.: My reply is in moderation, I know not why, but it’s the Washington Post, Nov. 9, 1989.
pking
Of course, the fall of the Soviet Union was predicted by insiders even before Reagan took office.
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL3006299M/Will_the_Soviet_Union_survive_until_1984
Martin
@Joe Beese: BTW, the phone monitoring by Bush was implemented 6 months prior to 9/11. Don’t give Bin Laden credit for what Bush had already done.
Jay C
@kindness:
Maybe you missed the party (it’s been pushed down the page by the Plinian Eruption of fine blogging from the Balloon Juice regulars), but we’ve already had a thread ripping the execrable Pam Geller. Flame away.
ADD: In the last line of Comment #12, that should be “Ol’ Perfesser Dumbass” Gotta be precise…
Martin
@PS: You know, this would be a much less infuriating blog if WP put all of the front-page WaPo posts in moderation. Maybe we could call this a feature?
Martin
@Jay C: Ah yes, including a side debate on fuckableness. I formally apologize for introducing that.
Captain Howdy
I remember when George Will wrote a column for Newsweek pooh-poohing the dangers of nuclear power (“China Syndrome” had just released). The magazine hit the news stands right around the time Three Mile Island was going all Chernobyl in Pennsylvania.
D.N. Nation
Glenn “Dude, Where’s My Recession?” Reynolds was pants-shittingly wrong about something? Wow, shocker!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Ah, the putz and the shrieking harpy and all those fools just make my head hurt. Happy Wednesday folks.
eemom
off the tired old topic of emmessemm twats, the WaPo today has the obit, which unfortunately I can’t link to on my work contraption, of Moshe Landau, who died in Jerusalem Sunday at the age of 99, which I recommend for reading by the thoughtful.
Landau was one of the 3 presiding Justices at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Prior to that time, in the 1950s, he presided over the convictions of some Israeli solidiers who shot Arab civilians who inadvertently violated curfews in border zones. The obit points out the interesting fact that the defense in those cases anticipated that of Eichmann: i.e, “just following orders.”
“A soldier too must have a conscience,” Landau said from the bench.
The obit also describes how he reigned in the prosecutor at the Eichmann trial from introducing Holocaust-horror type evidence that wasn’t relevant to Eichmann, as well as forcing Eichmann himself to answer questions instead of rambling.
I just thought it was an interesting coincidence that Justice Landau died the same day the US assassinated OBL.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: Unfortunately, this is a slippery slope which both D’s and R’s slide down, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Remember Clipper? Key escrow? Those were Clinton.
gnomedad
@Martin:
I didn’t know that. At least he got straight to work on some things.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Jimmy who?
I could never understand their love of the Carter narrative.
Carter left office 30 years ago. You had to have been at least 15 to 20 years old in 1980 to personally remember Carter, today.
Cole is 40 years old, and he says he has little memory of Reagan, who was president during his formative years.
Today only people above the age 45 to 50 could get the late 1970s, which means most of the country has no idea what they’re talking about when they invoke jimmy carter.
pat
Good news! Yahoo news reports that the Bin Laden photos will NOT be released. Thank goodness, I could just imagine those grisly photos on websites and billboards and posters all over the world
Guess we’ll just have to take our President at his word, huh? Plus a few dozen military and CIA officials, of course.
BTW, I stopped reading Greenwald a few weeks ago. His over-the-top hysterical diatribes just didn’t amuse any more.
MikeJ
@pat: You don’t believe bin Laden is dead?
DZ
@Martin:
Evidence please for your claim. It wouldn’t surprise me, but I do need some sort of evidence. You know, a reality-based life and all.
kindness
@Jay C: Thanks for the update. There was a period where I was entertained reading Pammy’s site (especially the comments) but now it’s kinda boring. It’s sad there are so many one trick ponies out there but I refuse to pity or feel bad for morons like that. That those morons vote makes me afraid for the country my children will inherit. For a while, I was having a hard time getting my daughter to vote. Now that she’s paying taxes though, it isn’t a tough sell. if only we could get the other 40% of Americans to actually vote.
MikeJ
@DZ: 5 seconds of google:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485_pf.html
pat
OF COURSE I believe Bin Laden is dead!!! I said I was happy that they would not be releasing the photos. The item appeared at the top of the Yahoo home page. Will remain to be seen if it is actually, you know, factual.
Sorry for the inexactitude of my comments.
slag
@MikeJ: Five seconds? You’re way faster than I am!
Jay C
@Mike Kay (Team America):
The “Carter narrative” is actually easy to “get”: The modern GOP/right wing has had an overwhelming psychic investment – for thirty years – in revelling in the advent of old Saint Ronnie the Redeemer in 1981 – thold “morning in America” wheeze.. Which investment has led them not only to magnify Reagan’s positives, and elide the “negatives” (tax hikes and the like) – but to try – vigorously and often – to ensure that Jimmy Carter’s Presidency is made to look as absolutely bad as possible. If for no other reason than to make Reagan look better.
Nothing to do with historical reality, mind you; but then, this is politics.
Oh, and speaking of disengagement from reality, has anyone followed the G&T link and read Glenn Reynolds’ Op-Ed?
Wowza! Describing it as an “extended bitch session” is being kind…
DZ
@MikeJ:
Thanks. Appreciate it. Just for the record, if I make claims, I provide evidence up front. I don’t Google other people’s claims. The onus is on the claimer. If that’s OK with you.
Martin
@DZ: And a friendly fuck-you for making me link to WaPo after my comment above.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
basically it comes down to this.
right wingers are talking up the role the special services played. fine in and of itself, except that the intent is, to minimize the role obama had.
silly as that is, they follow with trying to raise a cheer for enhanced interrogation.
i have found the bush and mccain quotes saying they wouldn’t do what obama did, to be an effective weapon in so much as right wingers don’t much want to talk after that.
obama derangement syndrome takes many forms.
Legalize
I look forward to the first moment in the debate between Obama and whatever plankton the Teabillies nominate:
GOPer: Obama does not understand, or is not serious about the threat of terrorism.
Obama: Really? Why don’t you ask Osama bin Laden about my understanding and seriousness. What’s that? You can’t. Because he’s sleeping with the fishes due to a bullet I ordered be placed through his face.
WereBear
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Considering how much they would ‘splode with a spatter if a Republican did it, I did wonder how they would spin this; but it’s preaching to the choir.
The vast multitudes know who is wearing the cape; and it isn’t George W. Bush.
Scott P.
Yes, I was born in 1971, but while I have lots of memories from the 70s, I have virtually no recollection of the Carter administration per se. I do remember the hostage crisis, as it seemed every damn news program led off with “Hostage Crisis: Day X”. I don’t remember the 1980 election.
I do remember the 1976 election, but only because I was in Head Start and one day before we left our teacher asked us to mark on a chart hung on the classroom door whether we wanted Ford or Carter to win. I dimly remember marking Ford, but I had no idea who either of them were.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Jay C: People under 45/50 don’t have any personal/visceral memory of Carter. This is also true of the reagan groupies. If you didn’t live through them, you don’t care. It’s like talking about D-Day or Tet Offensive to the twitter generation, they don’t care, unless it’s gonna be the test.
Personal memories and experience are key, as narratives are meaningless to the 95% of people who don’t pay attention to politics on a periodic basis.
Paul in KY
@PS: Inside the ‘social’ word is another word about boner medicine. Funny, isn’t it?
DZ
@Martin:
Actually, there is no such thing as a ‘friendly fuck you”, but given the more or less civil way you phrased it, no offense taken.
Cris (without an H)
We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.
Librarian
Nice Yogi Berra reference.
Joel
@DZ: well, seemed like you came down on one side of the argument. and that would be the wrong side. happens to all of us.
Culture of Truth
Nice timing, Mr. Hughes.
DZ
@Joel:
When I look at my posts, I didn’t come down on any side of the argument. Where do you get that shit?
MikeJ
@Culture of Truth: It was bad enough when he was making Home Alone movies now it’s wingnuttery from beyond the grave!
PS
@Paul in KY: Thanks for reminding me, I clean forgot. Yes, it’s vairry interesting — but shtupid.
Gin & Tonic
@Librarian: It’s not Yogi.
Chris
@Nom de Plume:
Wasn’t aware of much at the time, but I find the distinction between what was actually said in the late eighties and what’s being said now about the late eighties hilarious.
They had no fucking idea the Soviet Union was coming down and remained convinced to the end that it was all a ploy, as several people have pointed out. As far as they were concerned, the Soviet Union would go on forever. So it’s pretty hysterical that they’re now falling all over themselves saying that they always knew that communism didn’t work and that the Soviet Union was a rotting corpse and that there was a cunning free market plan to make it all collapse just by challenging them to an SDI race.
Bnad
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: The other winger meme developing is that Obama is taking undue credit for the work of the military (not going as far as Gller, but along the same lines): see today’s NY Post cover with a big grinning Obama headlined “The Grin Reaper” and focused on how Obama is getting a big boost in the polls. NY Post, doing their best to stir up spite & resentment.
Bill
“Carter left office 30 years ago. You had to have been at least 15 to 20 years old in 1980 to personally remember Carter, today.”
Have to disagree with this one. I was 12 in 1980, and clearly remember the election. I also clearly remember the Carter administration, including the gas crisis, the Camp David talks and of course his handling of the Iran hostage crisis.
The “Carter” smeer is an attempt to paint Obama as ineffective and weak, which was a pretty widely help view of Carter when he left office. (Whether accurate or not.) I think there’s lot’s to criticize this president for, but he is not ineffective or weak.
Paula
But what does any of this have to do with the royal wedding?? If we were truly living in a post-OBL world that shit would be back on the front pages, Obama and the wingnuts be damned.
Culture of Truth
@MikeJ: “don’t don’t don’t you… forget about me…”
Bobby Thomson
@Mike Kay (Team America):
Untrue.
quaker in a basement
Will’s Berlin Wall column is certainly tauntworthy, but it’s far more fun to taunt him for coming home to find his wife had dumped his belongings in the yard with a note reading ‘Take it somewhere else, Buster.’
Chris
Also,
Reminded me of a quote on a Balloon Juice thread a couple months ago (written about the robber baron community, but equally applicable here),
Like I told a friend recently, these guys are more like Soviet apparatchiks. Most of them are mediocre, but the one thing they do know is that, if you stick to the narrative of the social class, you’re unlikely to suffer if you fail. The social matrix will protect you, particularly at the top. You stick with the Party ideology or risk being socially ostracized, even if the long range effects are devastating to your own organization
Very Serious Person Syndrome in a nutshell.
gex
@Zifnab: I.E. He’s the kind of conservative that makes their b.s. marketable to people who would otherwise be horrified.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Ghouls
The MSM is throwing a hissy fit because the President has decided not to publish the bin Laden porn.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Zifnab: But I do remember an episode of Charlie Rose featuring Ana Marie Cox, Andrew Sullivan and Glen Harlan Reynolds. But in all fairness to Reynolds, George Will has him beat by a 7-1 margin for Charlie Rose appearances. Maybe Rose has a bow tie fetish?
Chris
@Bill:
It’s a smear they’ve applied, with varying degrees of effectiveness, to every Democratic president for long since before I was born. Carter’s case specifically reminds me a lot of Truman, actually – under Truman’s watch one friendly government fell and another was invaded by communists, which led to accusations that Truman had “lost” China and was being weak in Korea, much like Carter would be accused a generation later of losing Iran and being weak in the face of the invasion of Afghanistan.
Both of them were pretty wildly unpopular by the time they resigned. Truman got a rehabilitating narrative (in part thanks to Republicans who tried to rewrite him as their kind of Democrat, with little regard for the facts), Carter did not (in part because of the post-presidency narrative crafted for Reagan to make him look bright and shiny).
Is there any truth to the “Carter was weak” accusations? Well, the man had hardline anti-communist Zbigniew Brzezinski for a national security advisor. It was on their watch that military help to the rebels in Afghanistan started, and Brzezinski later told the media that they’d done in it part hoping to provoke the Soviets into invading and getting sucked into a quagmire. Regardless of how you feel about that plan, it completely contradicts the image of Carter as a genial “nice guy” who finished last because he just wanted to get along with everyone. His administration was as coldly calculating and devoutly anti-communist as any. Take that any way you want to, but the “weak sister” narrative is bullshit from start to finish.
MaximusNYC
This post needs the “Black Jimmy Carter” tag, stat!
Ed in NJ
@Culture of Truth:
I think lost in all the (appropriate) gloating over ill-timed editorials about Obama’s lack of decisiveness in foreign policy is that there seemed to be some coordinated effort to attack Obama on this front. It seems too coincidental that there were several op-eds and high profile blogs all spitting out essentially the same thing at the same time.
My guess is that there were several others, along with TV appearances to suggest the same that were shelved in the wake of the OBL kill.
zach
Here’s the paragraph from Will’s piece: “The regime might as well announce the obvious: Liberalization is a ploy, a tactic designed to slow the flow of emigrants by lulling them into the sense that things will be radically different. But the Wall will remain as the regime’s insurance that liberty is revocable.”
The point of the piece isn’t a prediction that the Wall would last forever, it was that Gorbachev’s promises of liberalization were phony and that he’d never remove the wall. Will’s timing obviously sucked, but he wasn’t nearly as wrong as Reynolds, and this is someone who loathes Will more than just about anyone.
Andrew
Yes, George Will was a douche, but to be fair, nobody thought the Wall was about to fall, least of all the East Germans themselves. The wall only opened because a press secretary misspoke about some new regulations allowing easier travel and East Berliners started massing at the checkpoints.
Culture of Truth
Yes they’re smeared every Democrat, President and candidate with this weak, indecisive, effete, etc charge.
It’s a sure winner should they nominate Huckabee or Romney who both exude toughness.
Andrew
@Chris:
Carter’s post-presidency has also influenced the narrative. His post-presidency, freelance diplomacy has generally been very antiwar. Some of which even I – who thinks Carter gets a bum rap – think skirted the line, like lobbying Arab governments to oppose the first Gulf War.
None of that, as you point out, actually reflects Carter’s foreign policy as president, which was very much in line with postwar norms. But if Republicans want to paint Carter as some weak, anti-American leftist, his post-presidency gives them plenty of material to distort.
Chris
@Andrew:
Okay, that’s true. Forgot about that. Lots of liberal activism there. The most “extreme” thing about his post-presidency is probably his stance on Israel/Palestine – the fact that the man wrote a book called “Peace Not Apartheid” is practically suicidal in today’s political environment.
Amazing what you can get away with when you’re no longer president. And yeah, it does give the Repubs a lot to work with, but I can’t say I fault him. Seems to have adopted the Bill Watterson quote “if I’m going to get clobbered, I like to deserve it” as a motto.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@Culture of Truth: nothing says command presence like the 5’2″ mitch daniels
Fred
I see the concern trolls are wasting no time trying to distract from this game changer. What a shocker…..sigh!
Culture of Truth
Carter was weak because a helicopter crashed. Reagan was strong because he had a cowoby hat and fled Lebannon with his tail between his horses’s legs.
gordon schumway
@PS: Oh, it’s real. From the Lexis-Nexis archive of “Emptying Of the East”, George F. Will, The Washington Post, 9 November, 1989:
Allan
Serious Conservative Pundits are never wrong, although reality sometimes fails them.
gene108
@Legalize:
I wonder if Sarah Palin’s going to say “Obama pals around with terrorists” again?
It’ll be funny as hell to see the GOP try that shit in 2012.
Triassic Sands
Being wrong is just part — albeit an important, even vital part — of being a Republican. They’ve got a philosophy that’s wrong pretty much from top to bottom and stem to stern, so making idiotic statements and huge errors is to be expected.
As for Will, he’s a big baseball fan, and if he brings the same level of expertise to baseball that he exhibits in politics, it would mean that he’s picked the Cubs to win the World Series every year for the past fifty.
I think I’m beginning to see the attraction of Christianity to Republicans. In the religion you can be a sinner your entire life and then, on your death bed, all you have to do is sincerely repent and profess believe in the Baby J and shazaam!!! your sins are forgiven and off to Heaven you go. So, in politics, Republicans can spend their entire lives being wrong and then, on their death beds — in private, they can say “Oops” and all is forgiven.
kindness
@Scott P.: I voted for Carter….twice. Some of us are of that age group ya know.
Chris
@Triassic Sands:
No, no, no, no, no. Much better. It doesn’t have to be on your deathbed. All you need to do is “accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior” and you’re set for life, no matter what you do after that, unless you reject him again.
I specify that this isn’t all Christianity. The Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant ones, I believe, recognize the importance of actions and not just faith. However, it is standard fundamentalist evangelical doctrine, and those guys tend to vote disproportionately very Republican. Like you said… not hard to see why they’re attracted.
Scott P.
And don’t forget Carter’s military career has pretty much been stuffed down the memory hole.
ed
Speaking of predictions, here’s McMegan talking about the recent poll which gave Teh Kruggmeister high marks for prediction:
As with Ms. McArdle’s insufferable inability to admit she was wrong wrong wrong about Iraq (or anything else), she is unable to give Kruggs any credit for being right. What a moran.
Gosh, perhaps we should extend the study to a longer time period. How about including 2002-2003 (or any other). I can’t help but wonder how Megan would stack up against the Dr. Shrill.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/how-is-a-pundit-like-a-mutual-fund-manager/238311/
Robert Waldmann
I had never heard that Will made that prediction that day, so, Doug Harlan J you are right of course. I am not totally ignorant however, so I do know that Carter didn’t encourage “the Iranian armed forces to stay in their barracks”. For one thing, they didn’t. They killed many protesters during the Islamic revolution. I specifically recall one demonstration which appeared peaceful and was met by gunfire. The next day Carter praised the Shah for his firmness.
Yes Carter supported human rights, but he made an exception for Iran (and friendly petroleum exporters generally).
I am a fool to debate history (as in what happened not as in why) with Reynolds. He also said that Carter introduced the 55 mph speed limit which was introduced by Ford.
Reynolds
Bill
@Chris
“It’s a smear they’ve applied, with varying degrees of effectiveness, to every Democratic president for long since before I was born.’
Don’t really disagree with what you said other than one minor point. I don’t remember a lot of smeer of Clinton as Carter like. In fact, I remember him being accused of unjustified use of millitary force and “nation building.” Often in allegedly “wag the dog” scenarios to cover his “personal issues.”
Robert Waldmann
My claim about Carter and the Shah is based on my memory of The Washington Post and (blush) Newsweek read at the time (I was in high school damn it). I guessed people don’t trust memories that are over 32 years old so I googled.
This is clearly written by a leftist I am not going to try to google my sources sources. I’m suspect that the death count is exaggerated, but it is very clear that the Iranian army didn’t stay of the street *and* that the US did not denounce the Shah’s use of deadly force
“September 6, the shah, acting on advice from Brzezinski in Washington, proclaimed martial law. The next day troops fired on a demonstration killing between 700 and 2,000 protestors.”
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~jwestern/ir317/diplomacy.htm
I’m quite sure that on September 8th 1978 Carter praised the Shah’s firmness and resolution, but I don’t think I can find the quote on the web (1978 was longgg ago in web time).
Robert Waldmann
I was wrongggg it was September 10 1978 not September 8 1978. I’m no more reliable than Glenn Reynolds.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/135558202.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=Sep+11%2C+1978&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post++(1974-Current+file)&edition=&startpage=A22&desc=Carter+Talks+to+Shah%2C+Says+West+Values+Iran
that is
http://bit.ly/kpMy4Y
A Washington Post article from September 11 1978.
that is
headline “Carter Talks to the Shah. Says West Values Iran”
abstract
“President Carter telephoned the shah of Iran yesterday to express his regret at the recent violence in Iran and to reaffirm his belief in the importance of Iran’s continued alliance with the West.”
I don’t have the text of the article. They
want me to pay them money for it. Ok they want $3.95 but proving Reynolds wrong *again* is not worth $3.95.
gene108
@Culture of Truth:
Well in the fall of 1980, my first grade teacher did a poll of who our we would vote for President. She listed all three candidates, Carter, Reagan and Anderson. All the kids but one voted for Carter. One kid voted for Anderson. Suffice to say I hadn’t heard of the other two candidates.
Anyway, looking back on the history of the Carter Administration, what hurt Carter was his inability to get his agenda in place. He had huge majorities in the House and Senate. The Republicans eventually flipped the Senate, during his Presidency.
The cherry on top that was the Iran hostage crisis, which the MSM decided to make the front and center issue of the day, from Walter Cronkite stating ‘x’ days, since hostages have been held at the end of the CBS Nightly News, to ABC launching Nightline for the sole purpose of reporting on the Hostage Crisis.
It didn’t help Carter that the hostages were not released until after Reagan was sworn in. If they had been released before the 1980 election things may have been different or at least closer.
Andrew
@gene108: The bizarre thing was that just ten years before, there had been the Pueblo incident, where over 80 U.S. sailors were held hostage by the North Koreans for nearly a year. Yet that never became the media spectacle that the Iranian hostage crisis did.
Robert Waldmann
Sorry to infest this thread and comment as often as Reynolds posts, but I have to register my disagreement with the title
“especially about the future.” Reynolds can’t forecast the past either. He doesn’t bother checking facts.
I don’t assert that his claims of fact are just as unreliable as his predictions. I’d have to read his blog to check and I won’t do that. I’m just saying that before saying he has more trouble forecasting the future than recalling the past one ought to check.
James E Powell
In our benighted country, Rudy Giuliani is deemed to have unimpeachable foreign policy cred because . . . well just does! And ‘strength’ in foreign policy matters seems to be based on giving bellicose speeches, invading third world countries and always always always insisting that we are not safe and that we need to spend more on military hardware.
With a pig-ignorant electorate and a corporate press/media that just loves war and war stories, this is what we get.
Carter emceed the Camp David Accords, actually accomplishing something in the Middle East. And he did it without bombing anyone. They hated him for that.
The Iranian hostage debacle was just good luck for Reagan. If you go back and check, prior to that, Reagan was running on his objection to the Panama Canal treaty and SALT II.
Carter was bedeviled by forces that neither he nor anyone else could control. Huge backlash against civil rights, ERA, and Roe v. Wade coalesced with the anti-tax movement from California. The latter had a serious anti-civil rights component. And, too, he had to deal with a rebellion in his own party from the Kennedy wing, who hated him from Day One. All that pre-dated Iran and the resulting spike in gas prices.
Ed Drone
@Allan:
Every Conservative story is the truth, and some of them really happened, too.
Ed
gene108
Gets overlooked, but it set off a lot of people, especially in conservative circles, that we were handing our canal over to the Panamanians.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@WereBear:
another thing which i am loving, is that younger people, who might not have been beaten into submission as much by the war on terror rhetoric early last decade, are questioning the other side of it, basically why kill bin laden? why not something like life in prison.
i like it because even though i don’t agree with it, i can see where some of it might be generational, and i might well have been indoctinated by carpet bomb messaging, in a way these kids weren’t. of course these under 25s questioning it, are being belted into submission by most people, but i like the attempt.
it also says how, bin laden really was an afterthought, for most of the time they developed their awareness. which of course is massive right wing rhetorical failure.
bob h
Can you imagine how many times George Will has been taunted for saying on “This Week”, in a discussion of the movie “China Syndrome and just before Three Mile Island, that such an accident “can’t happen here”?