The Coca-Cola Company Message Board

COMMENTARY: A ruinous runner-amok (Washington Times extract)
By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
April 18, 2008

"In the 1980 presidential election the American people did the best they could with President Jimmy Carter, given the limitations imposed on them by our Constitution. They retired him from office (44 states participated in the ceremony).

"Looking back, however, on how the scamp has abused his retirement, I, for one, wish we could have done better. Perhaps he could have been put in a jar. He has, in the succeeding 28 years since his exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., remained almost as ruinous a nuisance out of office as he was in office. This cannot be said of any other president.

"When Jimmy was given the heave ho, the Misery Index, an index combining rates of inflation and unemployment, was at an all-time high of 21.98 percent — up from 13.5 percent when he was elected in 1976. After his last full year as president, inflation was at 13.5 percent and unemployment at 7.2 percent. Today the Misery Index is at 8.83 percent, though the Democrats have not a nice thing to say about Jimmy"s Republican successors.

"In Jimmy"s day the prime rate moved from 7 percent to 20 percent, and the home mortgage rate was almost 18 percent. Think about those figures this autumn when you are asked to choose between Sen. John McCain and either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton, two Democrats with even less experience than Gov. Jimmy Carter in matters economic.

"As for foreign policy, Jimmy presided over a steady decline in American influence, as the Soviets went on a worldwide offensive while the U.S. military atrophied. American diplomats were jailed in their own embassy in Tehran and the military rescue mission mounted by Jimmy to free them was one of the few American military embarrassments of the 20th century.

"Incidentally, Iran's present president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, played a major role in holding our diplomats, according to retired FBI agents who monitored his communications from Tehran to fellow conspirators then in New York.

"Yet Jimmy remains quite full of himself. In fact, his sense of moral superiority has grown as the memory of his failed presidency recedes into history. Rather than retire to a library to read, as former President Harry Truman did, in the hope that he might understand what went wrong during the Carter administration, Jimmy founded the Carter Center for Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, and Building Hope. Perhaps it is his intention to spread the failure of his presidency throughout the world. Think of it, a worldwide Misery Index of 21.98 percent!

"There was a time when former presidents were reluctant to criticize their successors and absolutely refused to do so while on foreign soil. Jimmy broke from that discipline years ago. He attacked the Reagan administration from Cairo in 1984 where he scoffed at the president for being "more inclined to form a Contra army to overthrow the Sandinistas or inject the Marines into Lebanon or use American battleships to shell villages around Beirut" than to negotiate...."

Comment: Just prior to reading this, read an account that Barry Obama had declined an endorsement from Hamas This seems safe, since only America-haters who are U.S. citizens, such as Jeremiah Wright's congregation, can vote or legally give him $. But would this not be a lib dream team(?) Jimmy with his foreign policy "experience" and Barry with his glib evasions of responsibility for all the problems their actions create. Jimmy could wrap himself in righteousness and be our international hugger, but would of course not be allowed to teach Sunday school in Barry's church. Barry could hug the libs in the U.S. and mutually commiserate about their grand "misery index".

So many possibilities, so little time--

DiB