October 12, 2010
PSSSST...:
Like Carter, Obama is Right But Doesn't Get Credit (Richard Cohen, 10/12/10, RCP)
Almost like an apparition, Jimmy Carter stalks Barack Obama. The former president has published yet another book, his 25th, which has been greeted with some scorn and plenty of ridicule. Garry Wills, in the reliably liberal New York Review of Books, writes that "Carter is a better man than his worst enemy would portray him as. And his worst enemy, it turns out is himself." To which a chorus of critics would quickly add, "Not as long as I'm around."Those critics are having a very good time with Carter's latest book, "White House Diary." It turns out that Carter was an indefatigable diarist, recording everything for whatever reason -- his high self-regard, above all. He is peripatetic Jimmy, his fingers into everything, down to programming the music for the White House sound system. The book becomes "an indictment of the man's pettiness," Wills says, and once again a chorus of other reviewers chimes in with a hearty "amen."
You may wonder at this point why, above, I placed Obama in the same paragraph with Carter.
....no. No one is wondering at the comparison.
