CBSNews.com reprinted this New Republic piece that calls Ahmadinejad “Iran’s George W. Bush”:

On June 12, Iranian voters will choose among four leading candidates for president, but their real choice is singular: whether to continue on the course plotted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This ought to be a no-brainer: Ahmadinejad has made a mess of the economy, clamped down on political dissent and social freedoms, militarized the state, and earned the enmity of much of the world. In large Iranian cities, even those who voted for him in 2005 are almost unanimous in their disappointment. But in Iranian elections, demographics are everything. It all depends on who, exactly, shows up to the polls.
Iran has its own version of the Red State dynamic…
Mousavi is not Iran’s Barack Obama. He’s more like John Kerry, and this election year is strikingly like 2004 in the United States. The incumbent president is deeply unpopular at home and abroad. He came to power with a dubious mandate, but governed in a polarizing fashion that has divided even his one-time allies. Iranians have paid the price in every area of life that is touched by the government. The election is Mousavi’s to lose–but to win it, he will need to unite a divided opposition, and inspire at least a few of the beleaguered urban voters who have stopped going to the polls.