Is Barry, Jimmy?

Jimmy looks exceptionally good by comparison.

Jimmy mismanaged inflation and unemployment adding up to horrendous “misery index” measures.

Barry’s been successful in keeping unemployment so high that no one has cash to feed inflation. This is truly an outcome that had to be striven after. Barry and Ben Bernanke have destroyed the currency with expansionary monetary policy – monetized $1.25 trillion in worthless mortage papaer – and about $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, plus many hundreds of $$$ billions in TARP and bank (seems everything’s a bank excpet saloons and gas stations) debt guaranties. But, the patient expired anyhow. It appears, a dead economy doesn’t have inflation.

Various coercive federal mortgage modification programs, tax credits, etc. have kept housing prices high and that piper must be paid before the housing construction can recover.

The take-over of health care (no one knows how bad it will be but it will be bad) and demagoguery about raising taxes on the evil rich don’t foster economic growth and development.

And, you know Barry’s gonna be at least as successful in saving the Gulf from the oil spill to end all oil spill.

We’re screwed.

Oh, I blame Bush.

“Jimmy was a largely good and honorable man who did not get us into any wars and stayed out of the internal affairs of other nations even if they were ruled by despots the US previously propped up in the past.”

Carter was a self-righteous and smug idiot who presided over a bad economy, pulled the rug out from under the Shah and thereby allowed Khomeini and his thugs to seize power, who dithered through the humiliating Iranian hostage crisis, who hollowed out our military to the extent that the failed rescue attempt of the hostages was a symbol of American impotence, and who reacted to the Soviet seizure of Afghanistan by blurting out “Brezhnev lied to me!”

I’m tending towards the view he’s Nixon.

Really, the last half-century or so of Presidents blur into one another, and if anything, they should be compared by policies rather than parties.

Even in college, I heard the argument that it should really be the Carter-Reagan years and the Bush-Clinton years, since the actual policies of those presidents were very similar.

If you go back before that (skipping Ford, though an argument could be made for a Ford-Carter comparison), LBJ and Nixon had a lot in common, and Eisenhower and JFK had a lot in common.

So, if we’re going for historical comparisons, Obama is more like Nixon at this point than any other president (and the Stupak scandal is far worse in principle than Watergate), though Obama as Dubya II has some weight. Indeed, about 8 years ago at this time, Rush Limbaugh was accusing Dubya of being the second coming of Nixon.