7 responses so far ↓

• 1 Thomas // May 19, 2007 at 4:19 pm

  How would he know? He didn’t have any.

• 2 Luka // May 19, 2007 at 11:27 pm

  Yeah, my thoughts are more in line with those of Thomas, I think. I don’t know enough about Carter to judge whether or not he has any foreign policy skills. But if the assumption is that he doesn’t, then I’m not sure he’s the best to judge whether or not somebody else does.

• 3 T:Porter // May 20, 2007 at 4:13 pm

  Thomas and Luka,

  Check this out-

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

• 4 Luka // May 21, 2007 at 4:48 am

  T:Porter,

  Thanks for the link. Always love good Wikipedia entry. But actually, even though Julian is making a joke, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t relying on a certain kind of assumption in order to make the joke be funny or amusing or whatever. The assumption in this case seems to be something like that Carter’s negative judgment of Bush’s foreign policy is probably reason to think that Bush’s foreign policy isn’t good (because EVEN Carter, as bad of a reputation as he has in dealing with foreign policy matters, is willing to say that Bush is terrible). And if you agree with that assumption, then the joke works better. If you don’t, then it doesn’t. Or something like that…

• 5 steveintheknow // May 21, 2007 at 8:55 am

  Hey, at least Jimmy knows who his competition is.

• 6 Barry // May 23, 2007 at 12:37 pm

  Bush isn’t competition for Carter; Bush is clearly worse. People fault Carter for not getting the hostages back from Iran, and making the US look bad. Bush has done far, far worse (just counting foreign policy), and spent far more lives and treasure to do that.

• 7 Jon H // May 25, 2007 at 5:33 pm

  “People fault Carter for not getting the hostages back from Iran, and making the US look bad. Bush has done far, far worse (just counting foreign policy), and spent far more lives and treasure to do that.”

  Ha, Carter only had a few people trapped in a hostile Middle Eastern nation. Bush managed to get 200,000+ stuck there.