Jimmy Carter: Terrible President, Worse Former President | National Review

The truth is that historians have not been harsh enough. - Philip Klein 

A popular narrative surrounding the legacy of Jimmy Carter is that as president he was a victim of unlucky timing that impeded him politically but that he excelled during his long post-presidential career...

Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. 

• He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. 
• After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous...

The real Jimmy Carter was stubborn and arrogant...instead of stepping away, he spent the rest of his life simply pretending that he was still president and pursuing foreign policy goals even when it meant undermining the actual president.

The two most egregious examples of this came in his efforts to stop the first Iraq War and his freelance nuclear diplomacy with North Korea...

• Concerned by the looming threat of war after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, Carter pulled out all the stops — and then some — to try to thwart the president, George H. W. Bush...he took things to an extraordinary level. Carter wrote a letter to the leaders of every country on the U.N. Security Council, as well as a dozen other world leaders, Brinkley recounted, making “a direct appeal to hold ‘good faith’ negotiations with Saddam Hussein before entering upon a war. ...just five days before a deadline that had been set for Saddam to withdraw — Carter wrote to key Arab leaders urging them to abandon their support for the U.S., undermining months of careful diplomacy by the Bush administration. “You may have to forego approval from the White House, but you will find the French, Soviets and others fully supportive,” Carter advised them...