Sabato Compares Obama to Carter, Evoking ‘Killer Rabbit’ Episode
In a Tweet no president could love, political analyst and University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, raises the specter of yesteryear, and not in a good way:
@LarrySabato Larry Sabato
And Obama? POTUS looks weak, irrelevant, Carter-ized–at least for now. Any day, I expect him to be attacked by a killer rabbit.
When Larry Sabato sees a killer rabbit looming ahead, the White House should be worried.
The reference is to an April 1979 episode when then President Jimmy Carter returned to the White House after a solo fishing trip to his native Georgia. He claimed he had used his paddle to fend off a berserk rabbit swimming right at his boat. His staff didn’t believe such a thing could have happened. His own press secretary, Jody Powell, told an Associated Press reporter about it, and the next day The Washington Post ran the story on the front page under a banner headline: “PRESIDENT ATTACKED BY RABBIT.” Since the White House, which had a photograph of the swimming rabbit, refused to release it, the episode took on comic proportions and suggested, in many quarters, that Jimmy Carter was not only suffering from “malaise” but was downright delusional.
Within 18 months, Carter had lost his bid for re-election and the Reagan era began.
So it’s not the sort of comparison that would offer an incumbent the slightest comfort.
(h/t: NRO’s Jim Geraghty)
Well, judging from polling oulets, particularly the recent Gallup poll in which Obama had his lowest approval rating yet, this debt ceiling debate is hitting Obama harder than the GOP (unless a downgrade or default occurs of course). This is why I wanted the McConnell plan. Obama is not a leader nor a policy maker, and putting something as important as the debt ceiling in his hands like McConnell wanted would have highlighted what Sabato tweeted about.
Bring on the rabbit. At least we’ll get good photos.
Barry’s rabbit is an invisible Marxist one — comrade Harvey.
A chipmunk would spook Obama at this point.
Larry Sabato, “And Obama? POTUS looks weak, irrelevant, Carter-ized–at least for now. Any day, I expect him to be attacked by a killer rabbit.”
Rabbit promptly sues for slander “Rabbits care about their reputations, I would never bite a socialist!”
How about putting the Secret Service detail in bunny suits, as decoys to confuse the impending rabbit attack?
We could “create” a “rabbit” moment, by recirculating this picture:
http://blacknright.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/bush-reagan-obama-oh-my/obama-hanging-curtains/
KING: “Someday son, all this will be yours!”
PRINCE: “What, the curtains?”
(from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Obama cannot be compared to Carter except for the Iranian takeover in 1979.
The most important difference is that Carter was anti union and certainly not a stateist. Carter was brought in by the Kennedy faction in 1974. By early 1978 Tip O’Neil, then Speaker, had broken with him. The old left unions pressured Kennedy into running in the Primaries. The main reason he lost to Reagan was a complete lack of big labor support.
Truman in 1948 was not very popular, but he managed to get enough of a labor and farmer turnout to win.
So, a little less hubris and more thought, please.
“hubris”? This is a blog about a Tweet. Hubris is appropriate in a discussion of a tragedy by Euripides or Shakespeare, but give me a break.
Barack Bested by Bunny
Killer rabbit, no way. The president is too gutsy for that. Unless he can blame Halliburton, maybe, eh?!
“I soiled me armor I was so scared”