Comments on: Jimmy Carter: Worst President (and Ex-President) Ever

By: Tyler Farrer

Tyler Farrer — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:24:41 +0000

It looks like Carter has retracted his criticism of the President which makes Carter the most ‘careless’ former President ever!

http://www4.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/21/carter.bush.ap/index.html“

By: Davis Didjeridu

Davis Didjeridu — Tue, 22 May 2007 03:47:11 +0000

Commentary: No longer associated with the American Jewish Committee, and a well known neocon publication now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentary_Magazine
Also still can’t dispute we made the wrong choice when we didn’t at least try to follow some of Carter’s ideas on energy in 1976. Also, I completely forgot to notice that your whole argument is an ad-hominem attack and leaves Carter’s basic contention untouched. Guess you can’t argue against Bush being the worst president ever.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 22 May 2007 02:57:29 +0000

Commentary Magazine agrees with me.

By: Davis Didjeridu

Davis Didjeridu — Tue, 22 May 2007 00:18:02 +0000

http://davisdidjeridu.blogspot.com/2007/05/carter-one-of-best-ex-presidents.html

By: Tom Grover

Tom Grover — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:08:54 +0000

And yes, John Tyler was MUCH worse as ex-President!

By: Tom Grover

Tom Grover — Mon, 21 May 2007 18:07:20 +0000

A few thoughts:

Part of Carters failure as President has been attributed to his management style. He was terrible at delegating and therefore became ineffecient and ineffective. In the wake of the Carter administration, many Presidential scholars speculated as to whether the government and specifically the executive branch had become to large to be lead by a single person.

Now, as to Carter’s analysis of the militant Islamist threat and energy policy. In solving problems there are two steps- correctly identifying a problem and creating and effective solution. If you read Carters old speeches he is painfully correct in identifying the problems. Carters weakness was his inability to understand the source of the problems and provide practical solutions. Calling the nation to repentance for conspicuous consumption was absurd. That assumes the problem is self interest, which is actually the source of our wealth. It also levied Carters personal morals against the nation. The speeches Carter gave would have been fine if given by a Pastor, but not by the President.

By: Reach Upward

Reach Upward — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:57:12 +0000

I think that John Tyler was an even worse ex-president than Carter. He defected to the Confederacy and served in its House of Representatives. Thus, he was an open and belligerent traitor. Say what you will about Carter, but he at least hasn’t gone that far.

By: David James

David James — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:46:01 +0000

Wow, a Carter apologist. Other than an actor or two, I didn’t think they existed. The primary point that I take exception with is the notion that following Mr. Carter’s energy plans would have somehow solved our current energy problems. From my perspective, the energy plans put forth in the late 70’s prove the general lack of government’s ability to solve problems such as these. Billions of dollars were thrown away with almost no results. In the intervening years, the private market has made good strides in alternate energy. Thank goodness that government has had minimal effect on those efforts. While I have concerns about gas prices today, I believe that 30 years of government intervention would have lead to higher taxes and higher gas prices.

Regarding Mr Carter’s foreign policy ventures: if a unified Olympic team makes up for an aggressive nuclear program and polls in Venezuela make up for a dictatorship the Mr Carter has been wildly successful.

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 20 May 2007 19:37:52 +0000

In North Korea, Carter undermined Clinton’s plans by engaging in some freelance diplomacy of his own to undermine attempts at sanctions, which were Clinton’s original plan. This bought North Korea time to keep on working on their program. Carter has engaged in such unauthorized diplomacy many times.

What I know about the Carter Center is that whenever Carter monitors an election, the dictator wins. Independent, reputable exit polls in Venezuela had Chavez losing about 60-40. The “real” results turned out to the opposite, but Carter assured us it was all legit.

Public opinion polls of foreign countries’ opinions of our President are worthless. They didn’t like Reagan, and nobody takes that to mean he was a bad president. France and Germany have recently elected leaders that are generally pro-American, and we have close relations with Australia, Japan, the UK, and Eastern Europe. I find those facts to be a more meaningful measure of
our international support.

The idea that we support Israel because of the “American-Israeli lobby” is the kind of thing Carter loves to promote, while he accepts millions of dollars from the Saudis. Carter’s views border on raw anti-Semitism.

By: Davis Didjeridu

Davis Didjeridu — Sun, 20 May 2007 04:41:35 +0000

Craig, who was right in 1976? Carter, who promoted alternative energies like solar, wind, nuclear, etc and proposed an energy independence plan? Or people like Orrin Hatch who opposed him? I think around 3200 dead soldiers, marines, airmen, and saliors would rather we had followed Carter’s plans instead of 30 more years of dependence on foreign oil. That doesn’t count the millions around the world that are dead because we (the US) failed to take the lead to get off non-renewable energy and now suffer under tons of pollution (without a doubt about that) and global warming (you can argue amongst yourself about that, but you are part of a shrinking minority). We had a choice during the Carter presidency; and we chose to not allow our nation to move forward in research, development, and implementation of renewable energy. Now we are paying for it, in $3 gas, in American health, in potentially more prosperity, and the lives our of military.
I will admit that Carter made mistakes. It is obvious he failed to heed his own advice in helping the corrupt Shah, and that led to the Islamic revolution and hostage crisis in Iran. However, you make claims in your article about the Carter Center’s work, but most of them are logically flawed. You submit simply because Carter negotiated the 1994 North Korean deal, that it was doomed to fail. When in fact that led to a softening of relations among North Korea, its neighbors, and the US (remember the unified Korean Olympic team in 2000? Madeline Albright’s visit? the South Korean President getting the Nobel Peace Prize because of their peace-making efforts). Also, one of the reasons the Agreed Framework broke down is the Republican Congress refused to fund essential portions of it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework) Finally, it was the Bush Administration inexplicably putting NK in the “axis of evil” that put the final nails in the coffin and scared the paranoid NK regime out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It should be noted that Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, is who both the US and NK turn to now to get things done.
As to the Carter Center’s work, can you hold out the possibility that perhaps they know what they are doing and the Venezuelan people actually dislike American influence so much that they would vote for Chavez? But hey, it’s not like we could have less an obtrusive influence there if we had stopped being so concerned with their oil, like if we had stopped around 1977 or so?
For Cuba, all I can say is at least he is trying where a 40 year embargo has clearly failed.
I have not read his book, but I would expect such a response given the power of the American-Israeli lobby. Perhaps if we had gotten off foreign oil, say in 1977 or even now, we would care less about what happens in the Middle East.
Finally, I think you have intentionally taken the quote out of context. If you read the entire quote, you would be hard pressed to find any nation on earth that likes Bush, and therefore has a lesser opinion of the nation that elected and re-elected him. If you could provide a nation that thinks well of Bush, in terms of public opinion polling, please provide evidence of that.
I would say that Bush is the worst president, for the simple reason he has ignored every lesson of history about wars won and lost in the 20th Century (Spanish-American, WWI, WWII, Korean, Vietnam), hence we are stuck in the Iraq quagmire.

By: Tom Grover

Tom Grover — Sun, 20 May 2007 03:02:58 +0000

I was a little surprised Carter said this. I disagree that it’s inappropriate for ex-Presidents to offer criticism. They are citizens like the rest of us and have the right to speak out on issues. How they choose to speak on issues effects their credibility which in turn effects their influence. Carter is making a big gamble with his credibility by making an absolute statement about Bush. I don’t know what Carter is hoping to accomplish with this blast, however.

I also think its interesting that he used the absolute statement of “worst in history”. One of the first lessons of Politico Speak 101 is to avoid absolute statements like that- for example say “ONE of the worst in history”. Absolute statements are difficult to defend and usually position the speaker on the fringes in discourse.

I would characterize the Bush Administration as one of the most disasterous and destructive administrations in our nations history, but I would avoid the temptation of the emotion of the moment of calling him the worst ever. History will be the judge of the relative degree of awfulness.