Originally posted by SLAYER69
Carter has been a great citizen since he left office but was a lousy Preisdent. I lived through that era I know it first hand not from a books
perspective.
I completely concur. He was a genuinely good guy, which makes for a profoundly bad politician. His idealism and moral fortitude made him unable to to
deal with playing by the street-ball rules that Congress plays by daily. He would negotiate and compromise until his policies no longer represented
what was originally intended. Not getting re-elected to a second term was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. I can think of no
other politician who has been so active and done so much for their country (and for humanity) after leaving office than former POTUS Jimmy Carter. I
might have mocked him while he was POTUS, but after his presidency I can think of no other person more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize...and
honestly, unless he has some well-kept skeleton in his closet (other than Billy), he's probably already on the fast-track for sainthood.
Seriously, even Washington and Lincoln had their dark-sides, and even Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt had been known to be complete jerks from time to
time, but Carter turned out to be a genuinely decent human being who really was everything he said he was.
I'm not even above admitting that although I'm none too fond of Christianity personally yet if there were more Christians like Carter who actually
walked the talk while tempering their zeal with Humanism I might actually have been more receptive to walking that path myself.
One could shoot holes into his presidency all day long, but Carter turned out to be a good guy after all was said and done and his failures as
president were because he truly was perhaps too decent a human being for Washington.