Right News and Views

According to Wikipedia, out of 42 presidents from best to works, Carter ties for 27th place (with Gerald Ford) in rank. In the last one hundred years, only Richard Nixon (ranked 32) and Warren G. Harding (ranked last at 42) are considered worse than Carter.

But Carter himself removes George W. Bush from his actual ranking of 22nd place and puts him in last place. Now I don’t want to be critical of Carter. He always struck me as a decent man despite the fact that I disagree with many of his positions. This impression of decency was reinforced when I sat in during one of Carter’s Sunday school classes at his church in Plains, GA in 1995.

At the time, I was serving as a Seasonal Park Ranger at Andersonville (just north of Carters birthplace). While there, I helped out a very little with the Department of the Interiors project to turn Carters old school in Plains into a National Historic Site. Mostly, though, I worked at Andersonville. Still, I got to know a little about Carter over the course of that summer. Listening to him speak I also got the impression he was a confident but not arrogant man, intelligent, kind, and friendly. In short, I liked him in person.

But I also noticed the effort to portray him, if I remember the exact wording of the tee shirts and other similar items for sale in local gift shops, as “the best ex-president since Thomas Jefferson.” Seeing this slogan – which I was and still am under the impression was created by someone in Carters hometown - always made me feel kind of sad. It was tantamount to saying “Okay, we the people of Plains admit Carter was a failure as president - but look at all he’s done since he left office.”

I always felt that such a slogan was rude and felt a bit sorry for Carter every time I saw it.

But I don’t feel that way any more. We all have free speech, of course. But when you’re a former president the prevailing courtesy has always been to refrain from commenting on your successors. Carter has disregarded this courtesy. That’s his choice, and he has that right. But I don’t think, given his presidential record, that he has the credibility.