Barack Obama made a decision yesterday to make an issue of a brief passage in the Knesset speech by President Bush. Though the President never mentioned the Senator by name, and spoke only of those who “seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals,” Obama seized on the remark and launched a major controversy, claiming that the White House (despite consistent denials) clearly intended to make a “false political attack.” 

As I noted yesterday, this decision on the part of Obama involved obvious political calculation: Bush is less popular than McCain, so why not occupy a few days worth of sound bites in a Bush vs. Obama exchange?

The problem for the Democratic candidate is that while trying to associate his rival, Senator McCain, with President Bush, he may have inadvertently linked himself with a figure even less popular than the President: the sanctimonious and appalling  Jimmy Carter.

Today in Saudi Arabia, White House aide Ed Gillespie (traveling with the president) shouted to the press that in his remarks Mr. Bush had Mr. Carter in mind, not Senator Obama. Obviously, Carter fits the description in the Bush speech better than Obama – given his insistence on meeting directly with the terror masters at Hamas. The context of the Bush speech also makes the Carter reference more appropriate than any inference that he was targeting Obama: speaking to the Israeli parliament, there would certainly be far more concern with Carter’s embarrassing adventure in Hamas-astan than with Obama’s suggestion that he would negotiate with Ahmadinejad.

Obama, in fact, has said he wouldn’t negotiate with Hamas – which raises a big question: why yes to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but no to the elected Palestinian leaders of Hamas? Hamas advocates violence, refuses to recognize Israel, is pledged to genocide against the Jewish state, and rejects all prior agreements made by the Palestinian authority --- and Ahmadinejad takes exactly the same position on all these issues. Obama said he wouldn’t negotiate with Hamas unless they recognized Israel, rejected violence, and pledged to honor prior agreements. Then why negotiate with the President of Iran—who hasn’t met even one of those pre-conditions?

And when it comes to Ahmadinejad’s status as an elected leader, not just a terrorist chieftain, his election in Iran (where the mullahs threw out all candidates who weren’t sufficiently “Islamic”) was probably even more suspect that the most recent Palestinian elections that were won by Hamas.

Obama, in other words, is totally and profoundly inconsistent here ---and the developing controversy now links him to Jimmy Carter.

 Since Obama now says he disapproves of Carter’s “fun” (the very word the ex-President used in a USA TODAY interview describing his trip), would he agree with Mr. Bush’s remarks as applied to President Carter? If not, why not?

In other words, the current battle between Bush-and-Obama places the Illinois Senator on the side of the pathetic former president.

Do many Americans believe Carter did the right thing in negotiating with the killers and thugs of Hamas (where they later attacked Carter and claimed they never reached the “understanding” the Georgia jerk described)?

It’s arguable that Obama made a smart bet to assume that people hate Bush so deeply that they would instinctively prefer any other approach to foreign policy – no matter how ill-considered or poorly defined.

But if he’s betting that the American public has more confidence in the thoroughly discredited, 84-year-old walking hemorrhoid from Pains (okay, Plains), then that’s a bet Barack could well lose.