The award for the Most Ridiculous Headline of 2009 has been given to the New York Times, which is featuring this one right now on its website: Panel Criticizes Military’s Use of Embedded Anthropologists.
Horrifying, isn’t it? Kind of reminds you of this.
Ah, yes, “realism.” That habit of mind that enshrines fear and stasis, and would rather believe in the character and intentions of Arafat and Hamas (realism at its apogee) than disturb the “existing situation.”
JPod has nicely characterized the “I can do business with this guy” dynamic of the realists. Of course, they prefer to tailor the business they do to the client, rather than put the business first, and choose the client more selectively. This would have a lot to do with why they go into government service in the first place, and don’t generally thrive in the business world.
The problem with realists is they take so much cleaning up after. They have given us all the great geopolitical failures of the last hundred years. But we humans are inclined to accept the idea that realism is embodied in trying to preserve a status quo. Very rarely do we, in the aggregate, throw off that persistent hope, and turn to an “unrealistic” leader — usually called a cowboy, warmonger, brinkman, or fool — to attempt a readjustment.
I can’t psychoanalyze Carter, but I suspect his motive is not realism but rather anti-Zionism. This links him not only to Islam but also to North Korea, which sent pilots to aid Syria and Egypt against Israel during the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War
I would use a word other than realist for Jimmy Carter.
He ran in 1966 for governor of Georgia on a George Wallace ticket with Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor. That was the same year the Republicans of Massachusetts ran and elected Edward Brooks as the first black senator since Reconstruction.
Carter also served his church in Plains as a deacon. It remained segregated until the day Carter entered the White House.
He was described by Lane Kirkland thus: “He is your typical smiling, brilliant, back-stabbing, bullsh–ing southern nut-cutter.”
There’s a simple empirical test of your thesis, John: how many times has Jimmy Carter, as president or afterwards, achieved anything concrete–even by his own standards–by getting on the phone and calling a foreign despot? It may have happened, but I can’t remember a single instance of it. Can you?
On the other hand, visiting monstrous dictators certainly wins Carter all sorts of superficial gestures–photo-ops, fawning speeches, visits to glamorous or exotic sites, even the occasional empty diplomatic “concession”–that feed the capacious vanity of self-styled world statesmen like Jimmy Carter. And when he returns home, those gestures pay off again in the kind of fame and status that more than compensate for whatever geopolitical or strategic sacrifices he may have made on behalf of his country.
Democratically elected world leaders, of course, have no time or effort to waste on flattering a floundering, incompetent US president, let alone a preening, powerless ex-president. Their goodwill is only handed out in return for substantial quid pro quos that Carter never had the political strength or strategic skill to offer. Hence they and Carter are of absolutely no use to each other.
well, let me do a little psychoanalyzing here.
i think carter got a serious shock from his failure to deal with khomeini, the result of which was his ousting from the white house. I think that caused him to realize that he cannot win if he takes on dictators, and he is better off cooperating with them for personal benefit which is not just status and prestige, but hard money — just check out the contributors to his center, who’s who in the world of thugs. he can create the impression that he’s working for peace and human rights while in reality he works against them. shrewd. here’s a good piece on him:
http://sandbox.blog-city.com/linkblog/jump/?i=503363
this, however, does not negate the fact that he’s an anti-semite. and i think a lot of it has to do not just with the jews not voting for him when he lost the wh, but also because the israelis, see through his and his game and he cannot fool them as he does US and the west in general.
I agree with what Dan Simon said.
There are other things I’d add. I think Carter is a bitter egoist who hates this country for having turned him out of office and is bound to undercut our national interests at every opportunity.
I also think that he along with many of his fellow Dems have a ridiculous Cargo Cultish thing about things put in writing and sealed with wax and ribbons. He simply doesn’t grasp that in the absence of a strong military and the will to win, all this ink and paper amounts to nothing.
I will remember forever his idiotic statement that national borders whould not be set by war. (I take it he thinks the Allmighty works with Replogle.)
I think that Carter is animated by several pathologies, the first and foremost being one of the most arrogant and narcissistic persons I have ever witnessed.
His narcissism leads him to preen for dictators, which Carter wishes that he himself could be (albeit a benevolent dictator in his own mind). Carter wanted posters of him up over DC. He wanted universal adulation with adoring crowds saluting him. So now he does does in his mind, the next best thing – he acts like a dictator without a country. He puts his stamp of approval on elections and on subsequent presidencies like he is still the dictator emeritus. Even more cynically, his love of the hard left and dictators has one him adulation, money (from Arab groups and the PLO) and even a nobel prize. Cavorting with evil has its dividends.
In addition to his narcissim and opportunism, he is sympathetic to marxist and neo-marxist ideology. Thus his love for Castro, the Jung-Il and Assad. He thinks that pure leftism is a prescription for a “just world.”
Finally, he is animated by a deep seeded antisemitism that permeates much of his actions. His books, his visits to countries who hate jews and his blather about justice are often just bludgeons to beat Israel with. I think it is not incidental to his being, but centrally drives him.
Okey dokey. But in this world of “realism,” Carter just spent his own capital. And, ended up with NADA. He couldn’t get into Gaza. And, Olmert blocked off his best moves.
So, there ya go! Olmert is a genius. A much better realist on the scene, than the American peanut putz.
carol,
i don’t think you understand how propaganda works: via spin. the snub and prevention from going to gaza are now issues to present as “see how israelis are not interested in peace, but in apartheid?; i just came here to bring peace and look at their reaction”.
Olmert is an ass. Realism in not measured in snubs of another ass like Carter, but in not risking israel’s existence by conncessions to a peace partner who by its own declarations and deeds reveals he’s for israel’s destructions.
One of the worst features of Carter’s little excursions abroad is that he always returns to the United States.