Obama: The new Jimmy Carter????

Originally I thought we would get together and discuss each issue. However, this blog might be a good way to do that initially and as we go along we can make changes and adjustments as needed. You can post your impressions about an article at your convenience, as well as comment on what others say. We can still get together, but I thought that this would give us a starting point.

Tom said his first issue of Foreign Policy has arrived (January/February 2010). Hopefully others have gotten theirs as well. If not, click on the title to this post and you will be taken to the cover story from that issue: The Carter Syndrome.

The article is more of an analysis of presidential styles than a direct comparison of Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. The author, Walter Russell Mead, is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation. He identifies four styles linked to the presidencies of Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. You can read the article to get a more thorough description of each style but he ties it to modern politicians saying:

"Moderate Republicans tend to be Hamiltonians. Move right toward the Sarah Palin range of the party and the Jacksonian influence grows. Centrist Democrats tend to be interventionist-minded Wilsonians, while on the left and the dovish side they are increasingly Jeffersonian, more interested in improving American democracy at home than exporting it abroad."