The Carter-Obama and Romney-Reagan comparisons don't really hold up. | REUTERS GOP to Romney: You're no Reagan

A handsome former governor faced a vulnerable incumbent, a weak economy and a crisis in the Middle East.

The description is of the 1980 presidential race between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan. And it’s become the Mitt Romney campaign’s go-to analogy as he struggles in the polls in the final stretch of the campaign, insisting to donors and strategists that the election is still winnable in the final weeks.


But 2012 is not 1980, when Carter lost to Reagan in a landslide.

The 32-year-old comparison just doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny: the electoral map for Reagan was friendlier, the 1980 economy feebler, the incumbent more vulnerable, the crisis overseas worse and Reagan’s campaign skills were simply better.

( Also on POLITICO: Paul Ryan: ’12 race like Carter vs. Reagan)

“It’s a stretch,” said Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, who covered the 1980 campaign for The Washington Post. “It’s hard to make a Carter out of [President] Obama, and it’s even harder to make a Reagan out of Romney. I don’t mean any disrespect to Romney, but I think he’s run a poor campaign. You can’t say anything within this close a margin is over. I don’t do that. But he’s got a lot more to do at this point to win than Reagan had to do.”

One big problem for Romney is that despite a tough economy, Obama’s personal popularity has remained steady, and even gained a few points in recent weeks following the Democratic convention in Charlotte.

Obama’s approval rating is now 50 percent, according to the most recent week of Gallup tracking. At this point in 1980, Gallup pegged Carter’s approval at 37 percent.

And Obama had a free pass in the primary season, while Romney — never a favorite with the conservative base — faced a tough GOP primary in which he had to repeatedly prove himself.

( Also on POLITICO: Mitt Romney uses Jimmy Carter as campaign weapon)

In 1980, Ted Kennedy challenged Carter from the left in the Democratic primaries, even as the president’s liberal policies alienated Southern Democrats on his right. So Carter’s approval rating among those in his own party at this point was actually slightly lower – 48 percent — than Obama’s overall approval rating is now.

Reagan, meanwhile, was the overwhelming favorite of the Republican base. Considered the heir apparent after his narrow 1976 loss to Gerald Ford, he marched to the Republican nomination after losing the Iowa caucuses — which he’d blown off.

“You have to look at it like a French impressionist painting,” said Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, an adviser to conservative causes. “If you stand way back, you say, ‘There are maybe some similarities between 1980 and 2012.’ But the closer you get to the painting the more it separates.”

In 1980, Reagan indeed trailed Carter by a few points in Gallup tracking during the fall, but he actually led in most polls taken from early June through November, according to a compilation of all the available 1980 numbers from George Washington University political scientist John Sides.

The race stayed competitive from Labor Day until the debate on the Tuesday before the election, which Reagan dominated, but Reagan got a big bounce after his convention in Detroit that Romney did not see after Tampa.

“Reagan was down, but Reagan’s unfavorable ratings were not increasing,” said Roger Stone, the Northeast Regional Political Director for Reagan’s 1980 campaign. “His unfavorables were going down. Romney’s in the reverse situation.”

The Reagan march to victory has become a favorite political parable for GOP campaigns who have slipped behind in the polls, no matter the individual circumstances. It was about this time in 2008, as John McCain started dipping behind Obama, that his campaign began trumpeting Reagan’s 1980 comeback.

But the country was far different electorally. The ex-Georgia governor’s political base that propelled his 1976 victory — southern Democrats and evangelicals — had soured on him by 1980. It would be like a big chunk of urban liberals and African-Americans turning on Obama.

Reagan capitalized on the discontent, carrying one in four Democrats that November. His victory ushered in the modern-day, solidly-red South.

“Romney’s not Reagan, and that’s a big difference,” said Ed Rollins, who ran Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign and managed Michele Bachmann’s bid last year. “But, at the end of the day, the biggest difference is there was a large segment of Democrats and they kind of floated… If Romney gets five to six percent of the Democratic vote, he’ll be lucky.”

This race has been so much less volatile than in 1980. Polls all year have shown significantly fewer undecided voters and those willing to change their minds. Illinois congressman John Anderson, who ran as an independent after losing in the Republican primaries, remained a wild-card until the end. He drew a fifth of the vote in national polls that summer and finished with 6.6 percent.

“Virtually every state in the country was in play as of October 1980,” said Shirley. “Carter was campaigning in California, and Reagan was campaigning in New York City…Texas was in play. Now its routinely Republican, but Carter had taken it in 1976.”

Fewer electoral votes are in play for Romney now. The country is more polarized. Obama has a lock on certain demographics and states. There’s no chance Romney will come close in California or New York.

The economy of 2012 is not nearly as bad as the economy of 1980. The country faced double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates – creating a painful nightmare known as stagflation. Gas prices weren’t just high. There had been shortages.

“It seems to me that that’s the big difference,” said conservative activist Jeff Bell, who produced Reagan TV spots in 1980. “In that situation, Carter was to blame. Voters saw him to blame, and the remaining issue was for Reagan to qualify himself. And he did that in the first and only debate.”

“The problem with it happening (again) is that people still don’t blame Obama only,” he added. “They blame Bush more than Obama for the state of the economy.”

Republican power broker Charlie Black, who advises Romney and played key roles in three Reagan presidential campaigns, acknowledges the comparison is not perfect but still sees value in it.

“In most races, up and down the ballot, challengers are behind the incumbent until close to the end,” he said. “It’s entirely possible that Romney could be slightly behind until late in the game and then come from behind and win by a significant margin…What [1980] should teach them is you don’t need to panic if you’re down in the first half of September and first half of October…If the incumbent’s under 50, then you’re in the race.”

Many in the Carter campaign salivated at the prospect of taking on Reagan, as opposed to a more establishment-friendly-candidate like Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker. Liberals saw the former California governor as a lightweight ex-movie star who could be defined as an incompetent conservative extremist.

“Reagan in the fall of 1980 was not the Reagan we now know,” said Black. “He was carrying a lot of negatives…He overcame that with the debate performance…Romney has put in as solid a campaign performance as Reagan did to this point in the campaign.”

Supporters and critics alike agree that Obama is a better politician than Carter.

“He was a dour guy, brooding, didn’t have a lot of friends on Capitol Hill,” said GOPAC chairman Frank Donatelli, a Reagan White House political director. “Obama’s not that. He has amazingly high personal popularity for someone who has presided over such a miserable economy.”

Many Carter administration alumni believe they could have won the election if not for the Iranian hostage crisis. Radical Islamists seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979, and Carter failed to effectively respond. After a botched rescue operation, the crisis flared back up the weekend before the election when the Iranian regime offered new terms for negotiations.

Some Republicans expect the terrorist attack on the embassy in Libya will wind up hurting Obama, raising questions about why he didn’t respond to reported warnings. There’s also always the possibility of an October surprise, like a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran. The killing of Osama bin Laden, though, means that foreign policy is a net plus at this point.

“The president will be buffeted by events, but he’s in a much better position than we were at the time,” said Carter White House communications director Jerry Rafshoon. “Even if something like that happens, people feel Obama is doing the best he can and … he’s made great strides for Democrats on the issue of national security.”

“I think the Romney campaign is the worst campaign I’ve seen, and I’ve been watching campaigns since 1952,” Rafshoon added. “No message … It was a bad convention … People liked Reagan, and they don’t like Romney.”

Stone, a Reagan foot solider in 1980, now consults for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson’s Libertarian Party bid.

“Reagan was a non-establishment figure who came from a lower middle class background,” he said. “He had been a Democrat. He had great empathy for working people because he had been one. Mitt Romney, the only working people he knows are his servants.”

“I knew Ronald Reagan,” Stone added. “Ronald Reagan was a friend of mine. And Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan.”