Week of June 16, 2008

Republicans are comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy adviser, claims that Carter does not deserve blame for the malaise of the late 1970s. He says: “What led to the economic problems was the built-in inflation, which we inherited from [former Presidents Richard] Nixon and [Gerald] Ford.” That assertion is hard to square with the record. In 1976, the last of the Nixon-Ford years, annual change in the consumer price index was 5.8 percent. Here are the figures for the Carter years:

1977 6.5%
1978 7.6%
1979 11.3%
1980 13.5%

Now that the general election campaign has started, there is a great deal of talk about the GOP’s “Southern Strategy.” Many accounts say that the strategy was responsible for electing Nixon in 1968 and thus became the template for Republican presidential politics. But the story of 1968 is more complicated than that. During his nomination campaign, Nixon indeed courted Strom Thurmond, John Tower, and other Southern Republican leaders. In the general election campaign, he competed with George Wallace for the votes of white Southerners. The South, however, was only part of his November strategy. He ended up carrying only two Southern states that he had not won in 1960: North and South Carolina. He got a total of 57 electoral votes from states of the Old Confederacy, compared with 111 from what are now “blue states” in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast. He also made a serious effort in New York, where he took a respectable 44 percent to Humphrey’s 50 percent. In short, Nixon had a national strategy, not just a Southern strategy.

"Prominent Republicans...have been for the first time openly critical" of their candidate's"floundering campaign." The"forces of inertia, arrogance and self-denial will probably conspire to keep the Republican establishment circling the wagons" around him, but his"yawning credibility gap" will result in"a spectacular defeat in November." Someone being tough on John McCain? Actually, I wrote all of the above about Bob Dole during his 1996 presidential campaign. But it fits John McCain like a glove. We once again have a Republican nominee who is a war hero wounded in sacrifice for his country, personable and engaging, with a long Senate career, who is so out of sync with the times that his campaign feels stillborn. It's Doleja vu all over again.

Linda Douglass tells Howard Kurtz that it wasn't until a 45-minute job interview with Barack Obama last month that she decided to leave journalism for good and go to work for the candidate."The thing that really made me feel at peace with the decision is this conversation we had about telling the truth," she says."He wants me to tell the truth. Coming from a background in journalism as opposed to PR, that was really the thing I wanted to hear."

Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New.

Roughly, broadly:

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique.

The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn't decide, it decided. Now it's all on you. Old America, when life didn't work out:"Luck of the draw!" New America when life doesn't work:"I made bad choices!" Old America:"I had faith, and trust." New America:"You had limited autonomy!"

Old America:"We've been here three generations." New America:"You're still here?"

Old America: We have to have a government, but that doesn't mean I have to love it. New America: We have to have a government and I am desperate to love it. Old America: Politics is a duty. New America: Politics is life.

The Old America: Religion is good. The New America: Religion is problematic. The Old: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. The New: I'll sue.

Mr. McCain is the old world of concepts like"personal honor," of a manliness that was a style of being, of an attachment to the fact of higher principles.

Mr. Obama is the new world, which is marked in part by doubt as to the excellence of the old. It prizes ambivalence as proof of thoughtfulness, as evidence of a textured seriousness.