Jimmy Carter was not, perhaps, the most effective politician we've ever had in the White House. But a moron? The man is a mental giant compared to the likes of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

He was a nuclear engineer, and by all accounts a pretty good one. Roll that around your tongue a few times. Sounds impressive compared to, say, an out-of-work actor, or a failed oil businessman. Odds are he knows more math than the 5th graders Bush was talking to on 9/11. I doubt Bush does.

Jimmy Carter is not only scandal-free, so far as I can recall, nobody ever caught him in a lie. He's either scrupulously honest or a far better prevaricator than Nixon or W.

His post-politics philanthropy has set an example all too few presidents could follow. Most of them aren't smart enough.

He's well-spoken. Not so good in sound-bites, perhaps, but nobody comes away from a one-on-one meeting with the man thinking he's a moron. He thinks strategically.

The author may be correct about the Gore Nobel, even about Gore running. But about Carter, he's wearing blinders.

Yeah, Hitchens undermines his credibility with that stupid inaccuracy.

Most who have known Carter characterize him as brilliant, even genius. For example, Cronkite said Carter was the smartest president he met during his long career.

It's interesting that in disparaging Carter's mental faculties, Hutchens joins the likes of O'Reilly; yet Carter, like Hutchens, wants Gore to run again, and has been strongly urging him to do so.

Hitchens is describing Carter from the perspective of himself, circa 1970s, as a representative of the average European guilty of "reflexive anti-Americanism". He doesn't say whether he thinks Carter is actually a moron or not (though he implies he isn't). What he's saying is that reflexively anti-American Europeans, like Hitchens once was in the seventies, saw Carter as a moron.

I think he's clearly saying (or maybe not so clearly saying) that Carter wasn't completely a moron, and Nixon wasn't completely a crook (though I'd say Nixon lived up to his image far better than Carter did his). At the same time, I think, he's nodding to the Republican image of appearing excessively ruthless and the Democrat image of appearing excessively compassionate - a choice between the crooked and the moronic.

President Carter was an officer on a U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine. He was never a Nuclear Engineer. His latest book was so slanted and untrustworthy on facts that the head of his center quit rather than have his name associated with this travesty that he refuses to debate or answer for its many factual innacuracies. I dont for a second believe the man is a moron, no moron could be elected President despite the charactures that some draw of their political foes. But I do reserve the right to question his judgement. ;)

President Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. In the Navy he became a submariner, and was chosen by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program. He then took graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics. I'd say he qualified as an engineer both by training and by his work in the Navy.

Did the head of the Carter Center resign? I know some money-raising board members quit over Carter's "one-sided" book on Israel and the Palestinians, but did the actual head of the actual governing body quit? Hadn't heard about that.

Every naval officer slated for the submarine community goes to nuclear power school to learn the physics and mathematics behind how reactors work and how to operate them in the context of submarines. Appointments to the community are more or less for your entire career. You wouldn't go to a Seawolf-class submarine and then to a Ticonderoga-class cruiser for you next assignment. So saying that he was a nuclear engineer isn't too far off the mark.

You can question his political decisions all you want. I'd still trade him for Bush in half a heartbeat.

I didn't get to anything he said about Gore, but I did see that canard. No, President Carter was not only no moron, but he's the only president I've liked my whole life (which started under LBJ).

"When Democrat Eugene McCarthy was asked why he voted for Reagan in 1980, he explained that Carter had

quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was quite simply the worst president we ever had."

From Moonbattery's "Jimmy Carter, Worst President in History." Also:

Carter's missteps and shortcomings are too numerous even to summarize, so let's focus on the single worst: his midwifery of the Islamic Republican of Iran and the Muslim terror that has subsequently spread across the world.

Iran used to be a bulwark against communist expansion, and Shah Reza Pahlavi a crucial American ally. But being a liberal, Carter instinctively betrays our friends, just as Pelousy et al. are doing now with Alvaro Uribe in Colombia. ...

When Carter withdrew American support from the Shah during his hour of need, his government fell, and one of our most valuable friends was replaced by our bitterest enemy. Once the Ayatollah Khomeini had taken control, the 3,000 communists Carter had been whimpering over were promptly shot, along with 20,000 pro-Western Iranians. Khomeini executed more people in his first year in power than the Shah had been alleged to have killed in the last quarter century. So much for human rights, as if leftists like Carter had any genuine interest in them anyway.

Then Khomeini's thugs — who included current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — invaded sovereign US territory and took everyone at our embassy hostage. Americans remained in custody for 444 days, until the blessed day Ronald Reagan was sworn in, ending the bleak and humiliating Carter era.

We were 154 days into the crisis before Carter even responded to the act of war by breaking off diplomatic relations. When he hinted meekly at an armed response, Khomeini sneered that Jimmy the Dhimmi didn't "have the guts for military action." The closest Carter could come was a botched hostage rescue mission that only compounded the humiliation.

Muslims learned a lesson.

BTW, it was Hitch that first pointed me to the Gene McCarthy quote, probably what he had in mind by "moron."