Yesterday, in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, John McCain introduced a historical analogy that he obviously hopes will be as sticky as McCain = Bush. “Sen. Obama says that I’m running for a Bush’s third term. It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second,” he said. “I think this — election is about change, Brian. I think it’s the right kind of change versus the wrong kind of change. Sen. Obama wants to dust off the old big government, high taxes ideas of the 60s and 70s that failed then.”
First of all, as I’ve said before, I don’t see how McCain wins when the argument for his candidacy is fundamentally a defensive one. To paraphrase McCain, he’s saying, “I accept Sen. Obama’s terms for this election; it is about change. And even though he’s become synonymous with change, I believe I’m the better kind of change.” That’s weak. And not likely to be effective.
And neither is this Carter analogy. People obviously associate certain things with Carter that McCain wants people associating with Obama. Smart but weak. Unable to deal with high gas prices, a struggling economy, or trouble in the middle east. I get that. But Carter took office more than 30 years ago. As MSNBC’s First Read points out, no one who is under 50 today was eligible to vote when Carter first won election. Doesn’t this just cement the idea that McCain is stuck in the past, and still sees the world in outdated terms?
