NBC’s Chuck Todd got a good deal of attention for warning that “(Obama’s) on the precipice of doing Jimmy Carter-like damage to the Democratic brand on foreign policy.”

As distasteful as it is to defend Jimmy Carter, this isn’t fair to him. Carter, it’s true, earned a reputation for weakness, but he wasn’t blind to reality. Carter entered office urging the nation to get over its “inordinate fear of communism,” and he did his best to alienate friends and coddle enemies. But when the Soviet Union’s tanks rumbled into Kabul in 1979, he said, “The action of the Soviets made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they’ve done in the previous time I’ve been in office.”