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Re: Jimmy Rethinking

By Paul Beston on 11.4.05 @ 8:49AM

Dave, the Carter piece you linked to was interesting in other respects, too. Perhaps none more so than the man's invincible narcissism, as when he offered that "the best treatment he has received since leaving the Oval Office was from the first President Bush, and the second-best treatment he got was during the Reagan administration, especially from Secretary of State George P. Shultz. The worst treatment he's received, the former president said, was from President Clinton."

He does not seem to have ever considered that his successors in office were under no obligation to even return his phone calls. And it becomes more and more apparent that they should never have bothered.

Carter ran for president in 1976 quoting Bob Dylan's famous line, "He not busy being born is busy dying." Another Dylan line seems more appropriate now: "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."