"Forward" to the Past: Obama's Channeling Jimmy Carter

Obama's "Forward" Leninist campaign slogan is forward to the past. It's amazing how many phrases, ideas and concepts of Carter are being re-mouthed by Obama.



 
http://youtu.be/oQRxW-_MZCs

Then there's this. Carter acceptance speech of the Democratic nomination in 1980. Under is are the statements Obama made in his acceptance speech a couple weeks ago.

http://youtu.be/z_dTJTD01n4

OBAMA: The truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort and shared responsibility and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.

CARTER 1980: [W]e have a memory of Franklin Roosevelt, 40 years ago, when he said that there are times in our history when concerns over our personal lives are overshadowed by our concern over "what will happen to the country we have known." This is such a time, and I can tell you that the choice to be made this year can transform our own personal lives and the life of our country as well.

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OBAMA: The choice you face won't just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.

CARTER 1980: This election is a stark choice between two men, two parties, two sharply different pictures of what America is and what the world is, but it's more than that. It's a choice between two futures.

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OBAMA:  Today the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in the last two decades.

You can choose the path where we control more of our own energy. ...

Today the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in the last two decades. So now you have a choice, between a strategy that reverses this progress, or one that builds on it.

We've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last (pause) three years, and we'll open more.

I will not let oil companies write this country's energy plan or endanger our coastlines...

CARTER 1980:  The battle to secure America's energy future has been fully and finally joined. Americans have cooperated with dramatic results. We've reversed decades of dangerous and growing dependence on foreign oil. We are now importing 20 percent less oil. That is one-and-a-half million barrels of oil every day less than the day I took office.  This is what they propose: to destroy the windfall profits tax and to unleash the oil companies and let them solve the energy problem for us.

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OBAMA:  Times have changed, and so have I.  I'm no longer just a candidate.  I'm the president.  I know what it means to send young Americans into battle.  For I've held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return.  I've shared the pain of families who lost their homes and the frustration of workers who've lost their jobs.  While I'm very proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go."

CARTER 1980:  Let me talk for a moment about what that job is like and what I've learned from it.  I've learned that only the most complex and difficult task comes before me in the Oval Office.  No easy answers are found there, because no easy questions come there.  I've learned that for a president, experience is the best guide to the right decisions.  I'm wiser tonight than I was four years ago.  And I have learned that the presidency is a place of compassion.  My own heart is burdened for the troubled Americans, the poor and the jobless and the afflicted.  They've become part of me.

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