Ever the Wonderboy (Jimmy Carter, our Worst ex-president)

The American Spectator ^ | August 16, 2004 | Brock Yates

[quidnunc]

The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry.
By Steven F. Hayward
(Regnery Publishing, 272 pages, $27.95)

Mea Culpa: I was one of the pathetic dupes who voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, an angry reaction to the Nixon/Watergate mess and the dim-bulb succession of Veep Gerald Ford, a man seemingly better qualified to bolt bumpers on Fords in his native Michigan than to take pratfalls in the White House.

A quarter-century later that brief interlude in the voting booth haunts me while it produces endless amusement for my wife Pamela, who saw the peanut farmer from Plains Georgia for what he was, a nasty, egocentric Lilluput whose Cheshire-cat smile shielded a blurred, disjointed, hopelessly murky and marginally schizophrenic personality that prompted comedian Pat Paulsen to quip, "They wanted to put Carter on Mt. Rushmore, but they didn't have room for two faces."

Steven Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank populated by few, if any, fans of James Earle Carter, Jr. Yet Hayward the scholar assaults the ex-president not with the hyperbole of an arch-critic or political foe, but with the scalpel cuts of an academic surgeon, carefully dissecting the little man's political career and his more recent love-fests with every degenerate dictator on the planet. While the liberal media have elevated Carter to a position of "America's greatest ex-president" due to his hand-wringing, Chamberlain-like advocacy of peace at any price wrapped in a hopelessly hypocritical mantle of born-again Christianity, Hayward spikes this adoration with a prosecutor's indictment that reveals Carter as a petulant loser whose post-presidency actions often border on the treasonous.

-snip-

[Remington Rebel]

worst ex-president? how about worst president also?

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

There's a special place in hell for Jimmuh Carter.

Of course there is the eternal debate "knave or fool" - I come down on the side of "knave" but I know there are people who think "fool" - I'm just not one of 'em.

[sine_nomine]

Both knavish and foolish.

[The_Macallan]

Jimmy Carter's achievments as President:

DOMESTIC -
* Stagflation - the seemingly impossible combination of negative economic growth and rapid inflation.
* 21% "misery index" (inflation + unemployment)
* 14.8% inflation (went from 5.2% to 11.8%, peaked @ 14.8% 3/80)
* 7.8% unemployment (ended at 7.5%)
* 15% mortgage interest rates
* 70% top marginal income tax rate
* 14+% poverty rate
* He formed the Dept. of Education = entrenching the Teachers Union in the Federal Gov't.
* The 1979 "oil crisis" and more gas lines.
* He told America to wear sweaters, turn down the heater to 68 and just do more with less from now on.
* In his infamous "malaise" speech he actually blamed the American people for the nation's "paralysis and stagnation and drift".
* He ran a whopping 23% approval rating during 1980 campaign.
* He lost in a 489 to 49 Electoral landslide for Reagan and Republican control of the Senate in 1980. (Thank God!!)

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -
* Gave us 444 days of non-stop world-wide humiliation at our impotent and ineffectual President.
* Approved a poorly planned and botched "rescue" that only added to America's humilation around the world.
* Watched detente crumble with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
* Pulled out of the 1980 Olympics - for spite.
* Gave away the Panama Canal.
* Never did explain that mysterious $250,000 payment from Libya to his brother Billy.
* Allowed three countries to fall to communism under his watch: Benin, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe.

Jimmy Carter also favored:
* Equal Rights Amendment
* National Health Insurance
* SALT II missile treaty
* Unilateral disarmament

Jimmy Carter is nothing but a spineless, impotent, embarassingly-ineffectual, gutless, socialist, moronic fool who should never have held any Gov't position higher than a paper-clip sorter for Barney Fife.

---

It's Not Just A Gun...

It's My "HOMELAND DEFENSE RIFLE"!!

[kingattax]

jimmah carter...a total waste and a loser

[GeronL]

every good conservative should get one of those.

[rogue yam]

I'm glad somebody finally wrote a book bustin' on Skippy. I've been despisin' his ol' fool self for a long time!

[Nonstatist]

how about worst president also?

Without question. I cant imagine what another 4 yrs of him would have delivered; more Soviet Union expansion, at the very least, and further economic decline?

What a pathetically jealous, bitter, spiteful, shallow loser. We got off easy, IMO.

[The_Macallan]

One more thing - as horrible as things were in American under Jimmy Carter, in the first week of September 1980 Carter and Reagan were TIED at 39% in Gallup's poll.

Take a look at that list I posted again - compare it to what we have today under GWBush.

Under THAT bad of an economy - Democrats actually wanted to KEEP Jimmy Carter as President in 1980. And yet today they say GWBush creating the "worst economy since Herbert Hoover".

---

It's Not Just A Gun...

It's My "HOMELAND DEFENSE RIFLE"!!

[Khurkris]

ADD:
Paved the way for the fall of Rhodesia and the creation of 'Zimbabwe' and the destruction of that country as we are seeing today, by allowing various "black leaders" to act as US Diplomats contrary to US Law.

Officially IGNORED the GENOCIDE in Cambodia thus allowing it to continue and 1.7 million Cambodians to be murdered.

Little Jeemy...Hell has a special hot spot for you.

[oyez]

I got mine.

[Jenya]

Carter was a disaster, and is now making a comeback as Mr. Wonderful. You can't fool everyone Peanuthead. We remember what a disgrace you were for our country.

[GOP_Raider]

Hey it's two big horse's asses!

[Prime Choice]

Jimmy Carter was the first President to directly encounter the terrorism of Islamic fanaticism...and he blinked.

Thanks to his idiotic lack of meaningful action, he did nothing but embolden the Islamists. And now we're tasked with cleaning up the mess he helped create.

Thanks a lot, Mr. Carter. Your best intentions definitely paved the road to Hell.

[KingNo155]

As a Boy Scout I was Awarded a merit badge by him, shook his hand at the White Wouse. Was a great day...but he is our worst President!...Merit badge was in enviormentalism, must say it all.

[Moonman62]

I'm glad that most people are getting over the misperception that Carter was really a good guy who was just in over his head. The man is evil, and quite intelligent.

[steplock]

Excellent!!

Those who refuse to support and defend a state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be defined as "murder" in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be "Using a deadly weapon inside city limits," or "Creating a traffic hazard," or "Endangering bystanders," or other misdemeanor.
--- Robert Heinlein

[GeronL]

Those guys are, not that this matters, uglier than I am

How much does one of those er.. muskets.. cost??

[Boazo]