It Takes One To Know One

I owe to Jimmy Carter the debt of having learned always to hedge my bets when it comes to such titles as Worst President Ever. Carter, after all, followed the detestable Richard Nixon, during whose administration I naively assumed I would never live to see a worse president. Among his many other negative accomplishments, Carter's own feckless administration almost single-handedly set the stage for most of the problems the United States has faced in the Middle East since the 1970s. Being a worse president than Richard Nixon was no small feat, but Carter managed the job almost effortlessly.



For a number of years after his utterly failed single-term presidency was finally put out of its misery, Carter earned wide praise as the best ex-president in U.S. history. His do-gooding was relentless and some of it, I freely admit, did some genuine good. In recent years, however, and especially after he finally won his long campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter has become a cantankerous, quarrelsome old coot, routinely sticking his self-righteous proboscis on the world stage where it no longer has any legitimate business. As self-appointed U.S. Ombudsman, Carter's criticisms of U.S. domestic and especially foreign policy exceeded Clinton's rumored sexual conquests a long time ago, also no mean feat.

Now Carter has publicly blasted the Bush Administration as the "worst in history" in international relations. And guess what?

I agree.

It just goes to show that, just like in sports, records are made to be broken. I just hope I don't live long enough to hear George W. Bush say some subsequent president is the worst ever and have to agree with him, too. God help us all if that should ever happen.