CARTER II

Posted at 8:01 p.m. ET

The excitement builds in Denver.  People pinch themselves, not quite believing that, in a little while they'll actually hear Jimmah Carter.  Just the expectation of the man's wisdom is enough to take our breath away.  And our country with it. 

Not only that.  If they play it right, the Dems may just be able to have...Carter II.

My Iranian pal Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi alerts me to a new column by the brilliant Middle East analyst, Amir Taheri.  Taheri is thoroughly familiar with the foreign-policy record of Joe Biden.  He finds much that is troubling.  I suspect you'll be hearing about this from the McCain people:

BY choosing Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate, Barack Obama sent three messages. The first two are implicit admissions that Hillary Clinton had a point in the primaries. The third tells us more of what Obama means by "change."

Biden is supposed to make up for Obama's lack of the knowledge and experience needed to leader on national security and international affairs. And the Delaware senator, with his humble working-class origins, is also meant to reassure the "simple folk" that Obama seems to be losing.

But the third message is that "change" means a return not to the Camelot of President John Kennedy, but to the foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. For Biden, an early supporter of Carter in his quest for the presidency in 1976, shares the former president's view of the world and the United States' place in it.

Ouch.  Can Taheri prove it?  He claims that Biden "has been wrong on almost every key issue":

In 1979, he shared Carter's starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights.

Throughout the 1980s. Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan's proactive policy against the Soviet Union.

In 1990, Biden found it difficult to support President George Bush's decision to use force to kick Saddam Hussein's army of occupation out of Kuwait.

A decade-plus later, the senator did vote for the liberation of Iraq from Saddamite tyranny. But as soon as terrorists started challenging the new democratic system in Iraq, he switched sides and became a critic of the whole war effort.

Hmm.  No wonder Obama picked him.  There's more:

For more than a decade, Biden has adopted an ambivalent attitude towards the Islamic Republic in Tehran, now emerging as the chief challenger to US interests in the Middle East. Biden's links with pro-Tehran lobbies in the US and his support for "unconditional dialogue" with the mullahs echo Obama's own wrong-headed promise to circumvent the current multilateral efforts by seeking direct US-Iran talks, excluding the Europeans as well as Russia and China.

That may be the most critical point.  Banafsheh has repeatedly pointed out to me Biden's closeness with pro-mullah flacks in this country.

Had Biden had his way, "the Evil Empire" would still be around and Saddam Hussein still in power. The US would still be begging the mullahs of Tehran for forgiveness of unspecified "past sins" - and more American hostages would be seized in the Middle East while the mullahs celebrate their first atomic bombs.

By choosing Biden, Obama, the candidate of hope, has transformed his promise of change, into a back-to-the-future pirouette - back to Jimmy Carter.

McCain campaign, please note this.  Make Biden a liability to Obama, one he doesn't need.

August 25, 2008.