Best line I've heard tonight

I do, in fact, support the reelection of George W. Bush. While I'm not overjoyed with Bush, I think that electing John F. Kerry at this juncture would be like electing the ugly bastard child of Jimmy Carter and Millard Fillmore — in 1940.

— InstaPundit, who allows in an update that this comparison is probably unfair to Millard Fillmore. 

What scares me is that the reference also may even be unfair, believe it or not, to Jimmy Carter, who without question was the most feckless, ineffective president of my own lifetime.  After all, even the debacle that became known as Desert One wouldn't have passed the "global test."

The Iranian mullahs had sized up Jimmy Carter exactly right, and played him like a fiddle.  Do you doubt that their fingers are twitching today, watching John Kerry's quest for the White House, and that they're humming the tunes they believe they can induce him to play?   Oh, I'm not suggesting Sen. Kerry, if elected, will let them play him on purpose.  But then, neither did Carter — and yet play him they did. 

Some people, in this 2004 election season, are talking about American prestige around the world being at a historical low point.  I'm sorry, folks, but that's only the kind of thing someone too young to remember the Iranian hostage crisis, or someone stupid enough to have forgotten it, could say with a straight face.  America was the laughing-stock of the world, and Jimmy Carter was Gulliver, the sleeping, pitiful giant bound by a thousand Lilliputian strings. 

There's not a government on the face of the earth, friendly or unfriendly, that has any doubt about whether Dubya would respond to something like the Iranian hostage crisis in the way that Carter did.  And that, friends and neighbors, makes the world a safer place.  Not a "safe place" — there are nonstate actors yet to contend with, and state actors who'd never dare try something like seizing 66 hostages in an American embassy and holding them for 444 days, but might still try lesser mischief.  But we've broken the strings of the Lilliputians, and as Gregory Djerejian persuasively writes, that's in and of itself a damn good reason to return George W. Bush for another four years. 

Update (Tue Oct 19 @ 12:30am): A quick clarification:  I do credit Carter for finally trying something bold to rescue the American hostages held in Iran, and of course I salute the American military personnel who made the attempt with the best of intentions.  I'm not at all sure that a President Kerry would have that much gumption, which is why I began by saying that the comparison of him to Carter may be unfair to the latter.