Carter’s shadow is cast on Obama

Citing some of Obama’s policies, McCain has been urging voters not to welcome back Carter.

NEW YORK (AP) — Jimmy Carter has been among the country’s most active retired presidents, but even the peripatetic Georgian might not have anticipated having his name bandied about in a presidential campaign 28 years after leaving the White House.

Sen. John McCain, who will carry the Republican presidential flag in this fall’s campaign, has repeatedly invoked the former president’s name on the campaign trail, and with it the less-than-stellar memories of his White House years. Some high-profile allies, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, have done so as well.

The goal: linking Barack Obama to Carter, another Democratic newcomer elected on the promise of hope and change but whose presidency was marred by economic turmoil, high energy costs and a foreign policy widely derided as weak.

More subtly, McCain and other Republicans have criticized Carter for his criticism of Israel and meeting with Hamas leaders. This line has allowed the GOP to question Obama’s support for Israel as he has struggled to win over some Jewish voters and donors, unnerved by the anti-Semitic views expressed by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Illinois senator has disavowed Wright’s remarks.

Welcome back Carter.

Last week, McCain made the Carter comparison to push back on Obama’s oft-stated contention that electing the Arizona senator would be tantamount to another four years for the unpopular President Bush.

“Senator Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term,” McCain said. “It seems to me he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.”

McCain made the same claim about his Democratic rival at a fundraiser Wednesday.

“When I look at him dusting off the old, failed policies of the 1960s and 1970s, I’m beginning to think if he would be elected it’d be a second Jimmy Carter term,” McCain told a group of donors in Chicago.

McCain’s comparisons go beyond names.

McCain cited Carter in criticizing Obama’s support for a windfall profits tax on oil companies, saying it would limit oil exploration. Carter signed into law a similar proposal during the energy crisis that helped cripple his presidency.

“If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea too — and a lot of good it did us,” McCain said in an energy policy speech Tuesday.

McCain kept up the drumbeat Wednesday, proposing the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors and slamming a decision by Carter not to pursue fuel reprocessing technology.

The Carter comparison may offer some fertile ground for McCain, a 22-year Senate veteran.