Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter

For almost as long as I can remember, the presidency of Jimmy Carter has been the emblem of managerial incompetence in the White House. Republicans ran on this mantra for decades after the Carter presidency had ended. I vaguely remember one Republican presidential candidate -- it was probably Bob Dole, from the sound of it -- who just had a substanceless little chant in his speeches of "Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter Democrats." He didn't need to say more.

And of course Democrats equally accept the spin that Carter, for all his personal grace and intelligence and moral commitment, was a disastrously incompetent executive. The conventional wisdom that he is a better ex- than president is of course just another way of saying that he's better when he has no actual responsibilities. When was the last time a Democrat defended Carter's presidency?

But what's actually the case against Carter? Journeying through my drug-addled memory banks, back to my mid-teens, I remember two helicopters crashing in the desert in Iran, in an overambitious effort to rescue the hostages. I recall that he couldn't get inflation under control -- but then neither could his Republican predecessors, and it was Carter who appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed, and Volcker who finally applied the medicine. (And it's interesting to note that most analyses of economic well-being, hourly wages, household income, manufacturing, etc., use 1979 as a benchmark, because the Carter era was the high point before a long period of decline in those measures.) There was some weird business about micromanaging the White House tennis court schedule. And there was the "malaise" speech, except that he didn't really use the word malaise, but apparently failed to show the requisite Reaganesque optimism. There was also some mismanagement of the relationship with the Congressional barons of the time, a couple of small-town scandals, and some in-fighting in the cabinet.

So that's the case against Carter, on competence. How does that stack up against: The loss of a major American city and tens of thousands of lives due to failure to prepare? A war of choice based on false intelligence that's rapidly turning into a quagmire? A fiscal surplus turned into a deficit in the $300-$400 billion range? Making a wreck of Medicare? A botched attempt to eliminate Social Security? Allowing some of your top aides to deliberately reveal the identity of a CIA agent for political purposes?

I look forward to the day, and it will come, when the mere chant, "George Bush Republicans" will convey everything that needs to be said about this wretched era.