In Carter's Shadow

What Bush and his would-be successors can learn from the fate of the 39th President

AP

Jimmy Carter campaigns for reelection in Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas State line, October 22, 1980.

The ghost of Jimmy Carter is haunting the 2008 campaign. Well, let me restate that: the ghost of his presidency haunts the 2008 campaign. As for Carter, he certainly has not passed on; he is an active freelance diplomat and campaign consultant. In recent days he has told Hillary Clinton to "give it up" in June and estimated the size of Israel's nuclear stockpile. (Other previous Presidents have kept tactfully silent about its very existence.) Earlier, both John McCain and Barack Obama had felt compelled to denounce Carter's meeting with representatives of Hamas. Carter's almost predictable intrusions into the...

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