WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) -- Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has drawn comparisons with former President Jimmy Carter for his proposed policies and the way he views the world. But Obama's striking differences with Carter may prove more important.

Carter won office in 1976 under very similar circumstances to those facing Obama, D-Ill., now. Global oil prices had risen to unprecedented levels, a combination of economic stagnation and soaring inflation had hit the U.S. domestic economy, and Americans were tired of two terms of Republican presidents marked by an ultimately futile and costly war halfway round the world -- though the two Republican presidents had inherited it from their Democratic predecessor -- and by an unprecedented political scandal: the Watergate affair that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

However, four years later, inflation and other economic woes were worse than ever. The federal budget deficit had grown, though it was about to soar to unprecedented heights under Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan. And the United States had been humiliated and weakened in the Middle East by the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the ensuing hostage crisis.

The nightmare haunting a President Obama this coming January, if he wins the November election, will be that he starts out hopeful and popular like Carter, but runs into catastrophic economic and national security problems within a few years, as Carter did.

A President Obama, therefore, would be well advised not to focus obsessively on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as Carter and President Bill Clinton, another Democrat, did.