Beware what they imply

This ain’t from a Chicago newspaper, and it’s a longer excerpt than I usually fall prey to, but it’s quite good about the importance of party affiliation as way to cut through “superficial campaign positioning” when judging national security issues, and it’s beautiful in identifying B. Obama as our decade’s Jimmy Carter:

Hillary has been posing as a foreign policy moderate for some time now.  Obama is apparently as left as left can be, yet he covers this stance with soothing moderate rhetoric.  In a way, Obama is the new Carter.  Carter won, despite his relative obscurity and inexperience, because he was the breath of fresh air needed by a country exhausted by Watergate.  Carter’s religious convictions and seeming moderation were emotional balm for a traumatized nation.  It never occurred to anyone that Carter’s foreign policy might make the first serious break from America’s Cold War toughness.  Best keep all this in mind when listening to Clinton and Obama.  They’ll jump through campaign hoops to prove their toughness.  But in the end, we’ll get a Jimmy Carter foreign policy from either one of them.

Thus Stanley Kurtz in “NRO Corner.”