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Jonathan Demme’s “Jimmy Carter Man From Plains” documentary thunders into the nation’s metroplexes October 26th, using Carter’s last [but not current] book tour to remind the nation once again how he came to be so loved and loathed. The trailer seems designed to push all the Right’s buttons at once: “the conscience of the world,” and the “”most admired man in the world”

Back in the 70s Director Demme had other interests, giving the nation perhaps our finest women in prison film with “Caged Heat.”

In anticipation of the coming wave of Carter gush, and as the bombers warm up for runs on Tehran, some voices are pre-butting Carter and readying fallback defenses for the possible Iran debacle to come.

It is, was, and shall always be Carter’s fault.

Apparently Carter stabbed the Shah of Iran in the back, put the Mullahs in power, and/or America felt so shamefaced about having backed the Shah we hid his rug.

Moonbattery warms up:

“Jimmah also saw fit to call Rudy Giuliani “foolish” for leaving open the option of one day defending ourselves from Iran, which has been at war with us since Carter pulled the rug out from under the Shah during his disastrous presidency a generation ago”

The Mayor of Beverly Hills says Carter not only dumped the Shah but brought in the Bearded One:

“he changed the whole dynamic of the Middle East by his backing of Khomeini, and that has had a whole ripple effect in the Middle East, which America is still trying to recover from.”

Sage of Arkansas Paul Greenberg brings the feisty, using the beloved Harry Truman to disparage, um, all of contemporary society?

Let’s travel back to a simpler time with Greenberg:

“About the only feature I remember from my earlier visit to the Truman Library was a huge Persian carpet that had been suspended from the balcony. We’d pass it more than once during our brief tour, and each time Mr. Truman would say, “Yeah, that’s a rug the Shah of Iran gave me.“

“Old Mossadegh found out that the Shah had given me the rug, and he was burned up.”

But then Greenberg knew sin:

“The rug is no longer in sight. Political correctness must have overtaken even this monument to Give ‘Em Hell Harry.”

Whatever is his point here? That America once proudly backed a Ruritanian kleptocracy, then lost interest in the burdens of empire?

A National Defense University paper on how Carter turned his back on the Shah:

“On September 10, President Carter, with the approval of both Vance and Brzezinski, called the
Shah to make public his continuing support and to bolster the shah’s confidence. This action was interpreted by the moderates in Iran as signifying Carter’s approval of the massacre and probably proved
counterproductive to later U.S. efforts to relate to moderate groups in Iran…By late December clear divisions in recommendations emerged between Vance and Brzezinski, with Vance still seeking to find an acceptable coalition that would let the shah remain and with Brzezinski ready to urge the Iranian military, if necessary without the shah, to assume full control and crush the dissidents. The shah, apparently earlier than any U.S. leader, saw the impossibility of saving the monarchy and was unwilling to initiate the bloodshed of the “iron fist” approach. “

Awkward!

The Bush Administration says this one is on the other guy.

“The White House is not currently reviewing any Clinton presidential records because none are ripe for White House review,” a spokesman for Mr. Bush, Trey Bohn, said yesterday.”

Bohn claims it’s Bill Clinton who’s the holdup for releasing his administration’s documents, but is silent on what they’ll do once the requests go to the White House.

Meanwhile they can enjoy the spectacle.

“All current requests for Clinton administration records are pending review by President Clinton’s designated representative. The White House can take no action on any of the requests until the Clinton representative has completed its review of the records relevant to each request and reached a decision on either authorizing their release or withholding them.”

The Clintonians have tried to lay the controversy on the White House.

And as titans clash, the National Archives either can’t or won’t say who has ’em:

“Archives officials have indicated that the presidential review process for all Clinton White House records released so far has averaged eight months. A spokeswoman for the archives, Miriam Kleiman, declined to discuss whether aides to Messrs. Clinton or Bush have been responsible for the delays.“The National Archives is not in a position to determine where the hold-up is,” Ms. Kleiman said. “The only information we can provide is that they are in the pipeline.”

Bill Clinton joins the fellow glam merchants Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jay-Z in flogging ruinously expensive watches, in Clinton’s case $137,300 platinum time pieces.

And it’s all for charity[his]!

The limited edition “Jules Audemars Clinton Foundation Equation of Time timepiece” [say it aloud and watch time fly!] kicks back some money to the Clinton Foundation, everyone gets a picture with Bill and goes home happy.

But how will this impact the Clinton Library’s Timex sales?

ABC’s resurrection of Richard Nixon’s Fred Thompson observations [“dumb as hell,” “he isn’t very smart, is he?”] has stirred the legions of Nixon nostalgists from their slumbers.

Presidential Multiple Guess Quiz Dean Paul Slansky tears back onto the field with a Huffington Post offering, “Contempter-in-Chief: The Richard Nixon Quiz,” demonstrating that Thompson got off easy.

Whether calling George Scultz “candy-ass,” Ronald Reagan “strange,” or sharing his views of the “SEC Jewboys,” Nixon never disappoints.

Paul Slansky: National Treasure.

Get to know the NEW NIXON in all it’s glorious interactivity! Fans of former President Richard Nixon may turn to the nixonblog for Nixon Library event listings and links to all the right-wing blogs they might desire.

Coming soon: scourge of the Nixon White House and now chunkier of the duo of Woodward & Bernstein,

Carl Bernstein!

The NEWNIXON site’s sidekicks at YouTube and Flickr are sadly lacking in that must-have flavor of the moment, usergeneratedcontent. Or anything else. They’re empty.

It’s Flyckr site boldly states that “This is a public group,” immediately followed with “Uploads to the group pool have been disabled.”

The MySpace er, space, has one member.