Carter Passes On The "Scepter And Crown" Of The Worst Administration On To The New Worst Administration

This weekend, former President Jimmy Carter seemed to pass on the both the scepter and crown of the worst presidential administration to the new worst administration ever. Although no actual crown and scepter exist, still this is somewhat symbolic in that it salvages the historic reputation of the Carter Administration as simply largely inept and unsuccessful, although well intentioned, while the Bush Administration has been a disaster on nearly every level with few redeeming high points.

While Jimmy Carter has managed to launch more than a few controversial foreign policy points in recent years, his career since retirement from the presidency has been mostly positive with much good work for his pet charity, Habitat For Humanity. While other former presidents have managed to puff a cigar or two or improve their golf score, Carter did redeem his reputation to at least the status of a great expresident by his good humanitarian works.

Naturally, the supporters of Bush will kick and scream about this new "honor" that Carter bestowed on them. But few serious historians can find much to approve of in this latest White House management failure. From day one, this administration was committed to restarting the old Gulf War with Iraq that Bush 1 poorly concluded by allowing Saddam Hussein to stay in power unlike most normal "unconditional surrender" treaties following a war. But this failure was only a build-on from the Reagan Administration that built the Saddam Hussein war machine in the first place, with a covert and illegal plan to use Department Of Agriculture CCC Funds to be diverted to Iraq for Saddam to buy billions in arms from the U.S.. France and Brazil to counter Iran during the 1980's Iran-Iraq War. It seems like successive Republican administrations have been building up the Iraq mess for quite some time.

With a sneaky plan for a new war in Iraq that was not honestly publicly debated during the 2000 presidential election cycle, the Bush team was preparing themselves to be set up for a failure of this cornerstone policy of their administration. They say that the self-inflicted wounds are often the worst. Indeed.