Editorial: Worst in history? Bush's painful legacy
Editorial: Worst in history? Bush's painful legacy
Carter's comments weren't so nice, but truth tends to hurt.
Published: May 25, 2007
Jimmy Carter: "As far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.
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Groucho Marx: "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
Clarence Darrow: "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
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Winston Churchill: "A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
Oscar Wilde: "Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."
George Bernard Shaw: "He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything.
That points clearly to a political career."
Dorothy Parker: "This is not a book that should be tossed lightly aside. It should be hurled with great force.
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Ever said something that was impolite but painfully true? Jimmy Carter must feel like the kid at his grandmother's dinner table who blurts out that the pot roast is stringy. Or like the guest who, upon leaving the party, says he's had a perfectly wonderful evening, but unfortunately this wasn't it.
Former presidents don't customarily criticize other presidents, especially sitting presidents, and Carter's manners are being widely questioned. But the truth of his words is hard to refute. The pot roast was stringy.
The party was boring. George W. Bush's administration has been "the worst in history" when it comes to this nation's standing in the world community.
Only a man of breathtaking incompetence could have transformed post-9/11 America from victim to villain in such short order. The State Department's own surveys reveal that between 2000 and 2006, favorable opinions of the U.S.
plummeted around the world: In Britain from 83 to 56 per in France from 62 to 39; in Germany from 78 to 37; in Indonesia from 75 to 30; in Turkey from 52 to 12. Popularity isn't everything. But, in foreign affairs, the biggest kid on the block is wise to have as many friends as possible.
Instead, Bush has pursued, in Carter's words, an "overt reversal of America's basic values" from those expressed by previous administrations, including his father's. Carter referred specifically to the current president's doctrine of preemptive war-fighting against countries (Iraq) that pose no imminent threat. Carter backpedaled a bit this week, calling his comments "careless" and not meant to be taken "personally.
" But there was no subtracting from the substance, nor should there be. The former president's only sin is that his remark lacked the classic wit of some of history's best putdowns. As the famed attorney Louis Nizer once said, "A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.
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