Jimmy Carter telling Brian Williams, “I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents” reminds me of this classic Carlsberg sign in Copenhagen:
The Carter Center does do some great work, and Carlsberg makes some tasty brews (the wheat’s nice), but whether their respective soft claims to subjective supremacy are true or not, I can’t really say.
But while I’m posting beer signs, here’s an old favorite in Boston that admits of no equivocation:
Jimmy Carter can learn from this sign. No puffery, no probably, no “I feel…”; just a bold truth claim. Drop the conditionals Mr. President!
Something is holding Carter back. Personally I don’t think his self-esteem has ever recovered from the great Simpsons calumny of 1993:
For the record, I consider that Simpsons clip the high point of Carter’s post-Presidential legacy.
Carter’s comment makes him look like a self-aggrandizing a-hole. I don’t know him personally, so I can’t say whether or not that’s true. But his post-Presidential career has been something of a recurring failure-lap. The only time anyone cares about Jimmy Carter anymore is when he does something stupidly controversial–which is regrettably often. His post-Presidential career actually reveals precisely the same problems he faced with his Presidency–he’s all heat and no light. Sure, he sprints around the globe to meet with “history’s greatest monsters,” but what does he have to show for it? Nothing–no concessions, no real improvements in human rights, nobody won over to the cause of justice. Which is what America also has to show for his Presidency.
I won’t dare defend Carter’s post-presidential hobby of shuttling round the world looking for dictators to coddle and authoritarians to apologize for. And his views on Israel are, well, tendentious to say the least.
I WILL however disagree with you that America under President Carter did nothing to advance the cause of justice or human rights around the world. But I’ll do it in a post tomorrow.
Before you indulge in revisionist history, may I offer this excerpt from “The Passionless Presidency” by no less than the Atlantic’s James Fallows, Carter’s first Chief Speechwriter, published in May 1979:
“Here came other signs that Carter was not alert to bureaucratic perils. If there is any constant in the literature of presidential performance, it is that the President must husband his time. If he is distracted from the big choices by the torrent of petty details, the big choices will not get made—or will be resolved by their own internal logic, not by the wishes of those who have been elected to lead. Carter came into office determined to set a rational plan for his time, but soon showed in practice that he was still the detail-man used to running his own warehouse, the perfectionist accustomed to thinking that to do a job right you must do it yourself. He would leave for a weekend at Camp David laden with thick briefing books, would pore over budget tables to check the arithmetic, and, during his first six months in office, would personally review all requests to use the White House tennis court. (Although he flatly denied to Bill Moyers in his November 1978 interview that he had ever stooped to such labors, the in-house tennis enthusiasts, of whom I was perhaps the most shameless, dispatched brief notes through his secretary asking to use the court on Tuesday afternoons while he was at a congressional briefing, or a Saturday morning, while he was away. I always provided spaces where he could check Yes or No; Carter would make his decision and send the note back, initialed J.)”
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/pres/fallpass.htm
No doubt Carter had a couple successes. His bringing together of Sadat and Begin was masterful. SALT II was a good effort even if it was never ratified. But, for the most part, I would argue that Carter was mostly a failure as President. Prove me wrong.
Well it’ll be a very narrow defense, as I agree with you that “Carter was mostly a failure as President.” Stay tuned…