Carter's Advice to Obama: Don't Alienate Voters

By Greg Bluestein at the Associated Press

Former President Jimmy Carter has some advice for Barack Obama as he gears up for the 2012 election: Don't alienate voters with controversial positions.

The Georgia Democrat told The Associated Press on Tuesday that just about everything he did alienated voters, from sealing a treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to establishing diplomatic ties with China.

Carter said: "If your main goal is to get re-elected, avoid a controversial subject as much as you can in the first term."

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Gingrich Is Making Romney Better

By Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal

But less so this year than past years. There's a lot of 1980 in the 2012 presidential election, which doesn't mean it will end the same way, but still. The incumbent looks smaller than previous sitting presidents, as did Jimmy Carter. His efforts in the Oval Office have not been generally understood as successful. There's a broad sense it hasn't worked. And Democrats don't like him, as they didn't Jimmy Carter.

This continues as one of the most amazing and underappreciated facts of 2012—the sitting president's own party doesn't like him. The party's constituent pieces will stick with him, having no choice, but with a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is not only the Republicans who have been unhappy this year. All this will have some bearing on the coming year.

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