Jimmy Carter, I still think you’re a bad man

One of the most commented upon posts I’ve ever written had its genesis in an attack I made against Jimmy Carter. I think now, as I have thought for years, that he is a very bad man. I’m grateful that the vote I cast for him in 1980 came to nothing. Claudia Rosett, writing at National Review, doesn’t think well of him either, and writes a lengthy article about funding questions related to his Carter Center. It’s a good article, and strikes me as being quite fair insofar as it doesn’t draw conclusions beyond the limits of the available facts (and, as to Carter Center funding, facts are surprisingly unavailable). I especially liked the following two paragraphs, so I’m printing them here. I think, though, you should read Rosett’s whole article, not just this quote:

All this might be less disturbing had Carter confined his post-presidential efforts to such good works as vanquishing the guinea worm. But for years he has run his own mini-presidency — complete with a series of attempts to outflank or shape the policies of sitting presidents. These have included — to name just two examples — his letter-writing campaign in 1990 to members of the United Nations Security Council, in an effort to thwart the Bush I coalition that fought the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein; and his 1994 trip to North Korea, where he proposed to the dying tyrant Kim Il Sung a deeply flawed nuclear-freeze deal that may well have helped Kim’s son consolidate power and develop ICBMs and atomic bombs.

It could be argued that Carter, whatever his pretensions, is, after all, a private individual running a private foundation, and is therefore under no obligation to disclose full details of the getting and spending of the river of money flowing through his center. (In 2004, the most recent year for which the center’s website makes such figures available, donations totaled $146 million.) But in all his waging and fighting and building (and fundraising), Carter has been trading for years on the respect accorded to his former public office. Regardless of whatever room for murk the law allows, full financial disclosure is what sound judgment demands. The Carter Center itself makes much in promotional materials of its efforts to strengthen democracies by “promoting government transparency.” Is Carter so rigidly certain of his rectitude that he believes himself exempt from his own preaching?

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