In honor of Jimmy Carter

In honor of Jimmy Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize, National Review Online has republished this piece from Jay Nordlinger. Deep into the piece Nordlinger makes the essential point that Carter has never met an anti-U.S. dictator he doesn’t like. The list of such dictators includes Romania’s barbaric Ceausescu, North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, Daniel Ortega, anyone associated with China and, of course, Arafat. Nordlinger also reminds us that Carter’s one positive foreign policy accomplishment, the Camp David accords, was worked out by Sadat and Begin before Carter was ever approached. This was after Carter had publicly taken the position that any worthwhile deal would have to include the Palestinians.
It doesn’t bother me that a few Scandinavian socialists have given Carter the discredited Nobel Prize. But it is a bit annoying to hear American talking heads endlessly calling Carter “our best ex-President.” Let’s give these commentators the benefit of the doubt and put this assessment down to stupidity, rather than a shared-love of anti-western strongmen. By the way, my candidate for best ex-president is also an odd one-termer, John Quincy Adams. JQA landed in Congress where he became a tireless enemy of slavery. The difference between Adams and Carter is the difference between the moral and the moralistic.

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