Seriously, More Carter Comparisons?!?!?

I don't really have many strong opinions to share on the US Presidential election so far. Most of the issues worth bringing up I have already brought up with regards to Paul Ryan months before he was a VP pick. I also can't say that I see the recent embassy attack has much worth commenting on (though I've been meaning to do a few posts contrasting Libya with Syria, I should probably get around to it).

But this Washington Post article stirred me enough to at least feel the need to point it out.

“There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview. “For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated.”

First, really? By what possible mechanism? Suspension of foreign aid? Sending a few ships to sit menacingly (and uselessly) off the coast? Bombing them? A stern talking to? What exactly is this unknown, but compelling, story?

Or should we be really pessimistic? Would Qaddafi still be in power and no US ambassadors on Libyan soil? That's the most plausible way to avoid this mess in alternate reality land.

Second, Carter? Sorry, but this isn't 1980. The closest parallel to that is the attack on bin Laden being compared to Carter's attempt to rescue the embassy personnel with special forces. And unlike Carter's helicopter mission, those birds flew.

This is about as forced as a narrative gets. Don't know who is advising Romney, but I'd be telling him to sweep this under the rug as soon as possible. I don't think these birds are gonna fly.