Jimmy Carter: Dhimwit of the Month

In 1976 a man packaging himself as a progressive Southerner, former “nuclear physicist,” and Evangelical Christian appeared from out of nowhere to win the 1976 Democratic nomination, and eventually the first post-Watergate Presidential election in the U.S.  America was fascinated with this “warrior poet” whose exaggerated drawl seemed to contrast with his advertised intellectual and managerial abilities.  Could a homespun peanut farmer ascend to the international stage and become the leader that America desperately needed?

The answer was proven four years later when Carter was thrown out of office in dramatic fashion, actually winning fewer electoral votes than Herbert Hoover in 1932 (four years into the Great Depression).  He even did the unthinkable by conceding defeat before most of the polls had closed on Election Day – thus throwing several close House and Senate races to the Republicans.  (Not surprisingly, Tip O’Neil, the Democratic Speaker of the House, got along better with Reagan than he had with Carter).  It took Jimmy Carter just four short years to turn a seemingly insurmountable post-Watergate juggernaut for the Democrats into the Reagan Revolution. 

The former President is a complex and polarizing person.  He has extraordinary personal arrogance, yet is not overtly pretentious.  He is a calculating intellectual who also teaches Sunday school.  But in fact, while Carter was teaching those Bible classes in Plains, Georgia in the mid-60’s he was also shamelessly playing up to Southern racists in his campaign for governor by using ads that associated his opponent with (gasp) the Black Man.  In office, he embraced segregationists such as George Wallace.

When progressivism is a matter of convenience, other parts of the resume become suspect as well.  Carter’s claim to be a nuclear physicist is apparently based on his having taken a lone one-semester, non-credit introductory college course. 

His “born-again” experience has gone through several revisions over the years, prompting cynicism on the part of more than a few former supporters.  And, though he talks a lot about having religious faith, it seems to be a remarkably fluid version of Christianity that some have called Christianity a la carte.  He spends a curious amount of time criticizing those who hold a more straightforward interpretation.

Undoubtedly, Jimmy Carter appears at his best when viewed from a hazy distance.  The carefully-honed surface image is of an honest, humble Christian whose religious commitment to global progress sets him outside the Protestant and political mainstreams.  Look closer, however, and you’ll find a very bitter egotist, who exploits his Presidential status in a ruthless quest to keep sitting Presidents from eclipsing his own miserable legacy in office.

Indeed, it is the same remarkable arrogance that was both his downfall in office and the force that powers a relentless crusade to redeem his public image.  He began telling interviewers how much better he was as an ex-President than a President almost from the minute he left office.  Soon others picked up on the talking points and the deposed leader’s search for relevance began to bear fruit.

So what makes him a dhimwit?

Jimmy Carter is calling for the United States to pay hundreds of millions to the Hamas terrorist organization merely because they won an election – even though they have not renounced violence, accepted Israel, or apologized for the many suicide bombings in buses and cafes that left hundreds of innocent people dead or maimed.  “Give Hamas a chance,” he says… and surely they’ll reciprocate our good will.

But haven’t we heard this before?  Isn’t Carter the same man who once cautioned us to “just give the Ayatollah a chance” in Iran?  In fact, somewhat remarkably, this ex-President has played a role in our caustic relations with all three countries in the former “Axis of Evil,” which included Iran, North Korea and Iraq. 

Carter’s decision not to support the Shah of Iran against Islamic radicals in the late 1970’s meant that instead of a West-friendly oil-producer, the world is saddled with a Muslim terrorist state that blends its quest for nuclear power with unnerving apocalyptic language.  Iran is a global exporter of terror, from Chechnya to Lebanon.  They have all but promised the elimination of Israel if they achieve nuclear capability, and certainly "the Great Satan" and the rest of the “blasphemous” West won’t be far behind.

The Shah was at odds with Islamic radicals because of his modernization reforms, particularly his support for women’s rights.  Yet, when his police were forced to use harsh measures to put down protests, the opposition adopted the language of human rights in their grievance.  Carter bought into the ruse and withdrew his support from the Shah, which ushered in the Islamic Revolution and a new age of terror. 

The body count from the prior twenty-five years of monarchy was surpassed in a matter of weeks by the religious radicals, whose first victims, poetically, were the secular human rights advocates.  The killing and terror has since taken the lives of more than 100,000 Iranians.  The Mullahs also began mobilizing foreign terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, and they were responsible for the massive blasts in Beirut that killed hundreds of U.S Marines and dozens of diplomatic staff in 1983.

Needless to say, inaction in Iran was a monumental foreign policy blunder, and one that will continue to have catastrophic consequences, as the Mullahs work to obtain nuclear weapons while speaking of “80 seconds of hell” for anyone standing in their way.  Yet, Carter pursued the same policy of blind trust and appeasement with North Korea in the 1990’s, hurting President Clinton by agreeing on his behalf to a treaty that the Communists had not the slightest intention of honoring.

Carter has also undermined the American effort to rebuild Iraq by speaking out publicly against both it and George W. Bush.  Not since Teddy Roosevelt has an ex-President acted with such unorthodox lack of restraint and decorum for a sitting President.  But it is part of what Carter feels is necessary to redeem his battered image.  In his latest book, he makes it very clear that paired against any subsequent American leader, he would be the wiser, more spiritual, and, of course, the morally-correct choice.

Ironically, if Carter were still President, we would still be fighting the Cold War, and millions of poor people would continue to be lost anonymously around the globe in the strategic chess match between the superpowers.  His legacy is felt not only in Iran, but in places like Afghanistan, where he refused to take a direct, consequential stand against Communist expansion and instead began arming and encouraging the Mujahideen.

His successor broke every nearly rule that Carter believed in.  Ronald Reagan refused to accept the Cold War as an indelible fact and believed that the Soviets could be defeated.  While his detractors (including this writer) disparaged him with the same intensity that certain Democrats today put into investing themselves in America’s defeat in the War on Terror, Reagan did it his way… and he was proven right in the end. 

Jimmy Carter has never admitted that he was wrong about anything of real significance.  He is still in favor of pursuing the same self-defeating policy of appeasement in the War on Terror that he did in the Cold War, as evidenced by his desire to force Jewish Americans into subsidizing an anti-Semitic terrorist organization with their tax dollars. 

Jimmy and Mahmoud asking: "What would Yassir do?"

“At least they aren't corrupt,” Carter says of Hamas.  Well no, so far they’re just ordinary mass murderers who haven’t had a chance at the sort of cash that Fatah chose to line their own pockets with.  And what was Jimmy Carter doing while the Palestinian people were getting robbed?  He was rubbing shoulders with ringleaders Arafat and Abbas, while making pleas on their behalf for more cash!

The Palestinians knew that the United States would not fund Hamas when they voted in January.  That was part of their choice when they went to the polls.  If money were to be sent anyway, it would eliminate any incentive for them to choose differently in the future.  It would also be interpreted as a great weakness on our part, which isn’t the image that should be projected in a time of war. 

Failure and weakness is the legacy of Jimmy Carter, a man who still demands that we lend our enemy the rope by which they promise to hang us.

This article was written by Glen Reinsford, a politically-confused man and former Carter and Mondale supporter.  Glen also did volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity before Carter raised the profile of the organization in the mid-80's. 

He is the founder (and only member) of Democrats Against Muslim Narcissism (DAMN).

Go back to the List of Islamic Terrorist Attacks

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