"To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring,'" by Israel Hayom columnist Ruthie Blum, has a simple premise: Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter. That is, just as U.S. President Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran, thereby losing Iran as an ally of the West, bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini to power, and giving a major boost to radical Islam, President Barack Obama abandoned traditional allies throughout the Middle East, in particular Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, leading to an "Arab Spring" that is increasingly a radical, anti-Western Islamic Spring. Blum is a gifted writer and she's produced a timely and readable account of events surrounding the 1979 Iranian Revolution and 2011-12 Arab Spring. To be sure, "To Hell in a Handbasket" is not a balanced, in-depth academic study of the Carter and Obama presidencies; readers expecting one should look elsewhere. Rather, it is a sharp political polemic, pressing the case in favor of its premise unrelentingly. In wide American circles, including among no small number of Democrats, the name "Jimmy Carter" is, deservedly or not, shorthand for weakness, ineptitude, appeasement, naivet , romanticized notions about the Third World, and a "love thine enemies, bless them that curse you" ethic, applied disastrously to foreign policy. This image is particularly persuasive among supporters of a strong Israel, who would naturally constitute the majority of Blum"s readers. It is a chief reason why, in the 1980 election, Carter won only 45 percent of the Jewish vote. (Republican Party candidate Ronald Reagan won 39%, and the independent John Anderson, 14%. This was the lowest level of support for a Democratic candidate since 1920, and then only because of the strong showing by Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs.) Even those who were ardent supporters of the Carter administration now shake their heads in disbelief as the former president's tireless championing of underdogs has brought him to embrace, both figuratively and literally, Hamas officials, while throwing epithets like "apartheid" at, and placing all responsibility for the conflict on, Israel. Obama, whose relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu is famously difficult, and who has been accused of providing only weak, inadequate opposition to the Iranian nuclear program, is vulnerable to criticism much like that leveled against Carter. If Obama becomes associated with this morally confused milquetoast image among enough voters, he'll be a one-term president, just like Carter. That is clearly what Blum wants. She knows that the majority of Jews will still vote for Obama, but if his Jewish support is reduced to Carter-like levels, he may be in trouble in key states such as Florida and Ohio. As someone who does not share Blum's political leanings, I approached the book with a healthy dose of skepticism. What, I wondered, could a book like this teach me in a way that I'd be prepared to accept. Preaching to the converted is easy, but could this book convince large numbers of Democrats to vote for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the upcoming U.S. presidential election- Actually, that's not the right question. A big chunk of the population let's call it "47%" simply will not vote for Romney, as he himself famously explained (infamously and wrongly identifying them as economically irresponsible welfare recipients). And, as Romney said, he doesn't need the votes of this 47% to win. If he can add enough independents, fence-sitters, and conservative Democrats to the Republican base, particularly in a few key states, Romney will be the 45th president of the United States. Logically, this book should be aimed at these swing voters. By this measure, "To Hell in a Handbasket" is indeed effective. Blum brings one example after the next of polices from both the Carter and Obama administrations that are, in her telling, shockingly incompetent, ineffective, weak, and self-defeating. It is an impressive, and depressing, indictment of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East under these two presidents. At times, Blum overplays her hand, raising unwarranted or unpersuasive criticism. For example, she repeats the oft-heard story that Obama instructed National Aeronautics and Space Administration head Charles Bolden that "his main mission would be to make Muslims feel good about their contributions to science and math." Is it possible that the president subverted the entire U.S. space program for the purpose of helping Muslims feel good about themselves? I think not. The truth, of course, is more prosaic: Symbolic and political goals have always played a large role in the space program. The race to the moon was spurred by the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union. In the age of d tente, the competitive spirit of Apollo gave way to cooperation in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The inclusion of astronauts from other countries, among them Israel, on U.S. space missions, is another way in which the space program achieves symbolic and political goals. In the post-9/11 era, in the wake of long and bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama was intent on projecting a more cooperative attitude toward the international community and a less confrontational attitude toward the Muslim world than did his predecessor in the White House, President George W. Bush. Thus, it was natural that Bolden should express in an interview with Al-Jazeera that among NASA's goals was the promotion of international relations in general, and peaceful, cooperative ties with the Muslim world, in particular. Another example: Blum repeats the silly accusation that Obama abolished the word "terrorism," presumably because the term's negative connotations might insult or upset the terrorists. Of course he did no such thing, as countless references to "terrorism" in Obama's speeches will attest. Flaws such as these detract from the book's effectiveness, particularly among those of us who don't share Blum's general political outlook. But far more important than these flaws are the many examples of real and justified criticism that cannot be easily dismissed. For example, the Obama administration's failure to provide meaningful help to (and Blum calls it a "shameless abandonment of") the Iranian Green Movement during the 2009-2010 election protests in that country. And its failure to stop the spread of organizations linked to al-Qaida throughout the region most prominently in "liberated" post-Arab-Spring countries such as Libya and Egypt. And its seemingly naïve, premature support for the revolution in Egypt, which in retrospect looks more like a takeover by anti-American, anti-Israel militant Islamic forces rather than a move toward real democracy, freedom and human rights. And its seeming lack of any coherent policy at all regarding the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria. Since "To Hell in a Handbasket" was published, events throughout the Middle East, such as the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three others during the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, and widespread riots protesting the "Innocence of Muslims" YouTube clip, only serve to reinforce the picture Blum has painted so vividly in her book. It remains to be seen what role foreign policy will play in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and whether Americans are sufficiently upset about Obama's handling of the Arab Spring, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and the Iranian nuclear program, to punish the president in the voting booth.
