Redstate

many voters were not even alive during the seventies. Others were just babies. This will not meant anything to them.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Folks who are old enough to actually have felt the effects of Carter's administration are 50+. Those voters aren't swing voters anymore; by the time you're 50, you're statistically VERY unlikely to change the party for which you vote. At best, references to Carter will rally the older portion of the base.

To younger voters who are more likely to be open to voting for either candidate, Carter conjures up a vague notion of ineffective governance, but the specifics of why it was ineffective are hazy at best. To make the analogy effective, McCain would have to go through all of Carter's failed policies and explain how they are similar to Obama's--probably not the most effective use of his campaign time.

I'm 36 and I remember yellow ribbons and "America held hostage" and gas lines and inflation (i.e., the cost of a 2-liter of Pepsi at the supermarket kept going up) and Afghanistan and 'malaise'. I can still picture one of those Scholastic publications we were assigned in 4th grade - little red paper-covered magazine with a big graphic on the front of Carter, Reagan and John Anderson over the White House, and short summaries inside of their general positions on the major issues. We watched Reagan's inauguration in school, and the assassination attempt as well.

Carter was bad enough that you didn't need to be out of grade school to understand why. In fact, you needed a graduate degree to not understand.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

is putting things in context and educating the electorate.

It is precisely because many voters do not remember the 1970s that McCain should, in the context of explaining the current energy crisis, discuss the 1970s.

This means doing more than one-liners. It means explaining incentives, and reviewing history to identify what does not work.

Gas rationing. Is there anybody here who thinks Obama won't try to ration gas?

he held while he rationed our gasoline.

At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.

Finally McCain strikes back against Obama and the Democrats, and you take him to task!? This is a McCain I can support. You don't think young voters are capable of using Google or Wikipedia to understand the Carter years? Granted, McCain can flesh this attack out with more details, but it is a very good start. If not, then how do you suggest he attack Obama?

We can very easily read what happened when Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter both enacted their versions of Obamanomics. It wasn't pretty. Gas lines and Odd vs. Even days are not too hard to imagine.

They also are not too hard to extrapolate into modern terms. Particularly if you live in Fairfax County, Va. Now there is a place that would screwed against the wall if we had gasoline rationing as a policy of state.

At a rate of 6,000 earmarks per spending bill, Speaker Pelosi is selling America's future to the special intrest groups.

When you are hit with an effective attack, you must combat it on two levels. Most importantly as you point out, you must refute the argument with substantive counter-arguments.

However, in today's media soundbite culture, you must also win the battle of the one-liner. If your opponent has a highly persuasive argument that can be summed up in one sentence, that will suck the oxygen right out of your detailed, substantive responses. Thus you have to disrupt the attack with a similarly succint response before you can move on to the 7 point plans.

It doesn't matter if everyone remembers the Carter administration. It only matters that the comeback blunts the penetration of the "Bush's third term" attack long enough for people to stop and realize that neither Bush nor Carter are running again.

"If all men were just, there would be no need of valor."
- Agesilaus

Those who would ignore the past are doomed to relive the past... (or something like that...)

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H. H. Williams

Obama is trying to wrap himself in the legacy of Robert Kennedy, even though that was 15 years before Carter.

How many young people today know much about Robert Kennedy?

What has happened is that a leftist-tinged academia and media has done its best to erase the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s from the public's mind, and turn the 1960s into a kind of Golden Age. Many young Americans actually think it was Richard Nixon who got America into Vietnam, because the liberals have done such a great job of flushing Lyndon Johnson down the national memory hole.

They have slammed Reagan for deficits and Iran-Contra, while doing their best to erase the disastrous economic legacy of Carter from the national discourse, and erase the threatening nature of the USSR from world history. The purpose of rewriting history, as always, is to make the liberals always look right.

As a result, Obama can run on the legacy of the 1960s without ever being asked: If the 1960s were so terrific, why did the public ever toss out the liberals of the 1960s and replace them with the conservatives of the 1980s and 1990s?

We conservatives really have to set the record straight. We cannot win against a national narrative, being created by the liberals, that "Liberalism has always been right, conservatism has always been wrong, and it's only by dirty and racist politics that conservatives ever win elections."

Ford would be a dated reference. He went into quiet retirement.

Carter won't go into retirement, he's the former president that just won't shut up. Carter insists on continuing to suck as an American, so he's very relevant today, albeit more so from a ignorant foreign policy/anti-Israel perspective.

---------------------------------
Oil: Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.

Clinton has been beat to death as much as G W Bush. Guess it is Carters turn now, but when are the lefties going to go after Bush 41?

From what I have seen on HuffPo and Daily KOS, the young netroots know about Jimmy Carter, even though many of them weren't born yet during his Administration.

And guess what, they think he was a great President. They liked his pacifism, his willingness to see things from our enemies' point of view, and most of all, his insistence that we sacrifice our affluent life style in order to help others.

So don't think no one has heard of Jimmy Carter. The policies and principles Carter espoused, that you and I found so repugnant, are being touted by today's leftist college professors as the way America should be run. Our young people are being taught (or indoctrinated) in a transnationalist worldview that says they should care more about the rest of the world than about their own flawed country. Obama, like Carter, is just perfect for them.