It's a lot harder than I expected

About a week ago, All Things Beautiful issued a challenge, which I answered only partly, here.

It's one thing to try to list the people you consider the best at -- or of -- something, and quite another to list the worst. The good ones, you try to remember, and the bad... well, let's just say there's a real challenge. In fact, a decade ago, I was staring at myself in the mirror and chastising myself for having the unmitigated ego to think I was the worst person on the planet, simply for existing. Needless to say, I have a problem, sometimes, with perspective.

So, when put to the task of finding ten people in our nation's history who were -- or are -- worse than I, I find myself falling into a torpor. Swimming through the mental molasses, though, I've come to the conclusion that the worst American has been the one with the best intentions: Jimmy Carter takes the cake, candles and all. It's fine and dandy to be an idealist or a cock-eyed, optimistic ideologue if all you're running is the little church on the corner, but when you're the leader of the Free World, you need to have at least a hint of a pragmatic bent, or you end up handing the nation's hindquarters (along with that of an allied nation's shaky government) to Iranian terrorists, sitting on your hands and moaning "woe is me" as the unemployment rate and interest rates and gas prices skyrocket to nearly European levels, and screwing a number of other (at that time, very good) allies in the MidEast by having Arafat play nice for a day in front of the cameras. All because you're too "nice" to try anything even remotely sensible.

The presidency, already and repeatedly, had been undermined by cupidity, but Carter took it one giant step farther down with deliberate, blissful ignorance, and took the nation with it. And he wore those godawful sweaters while doing it.



So, Rev. Jim Jones and Jimmah Cahtuh take the top 2 positions, so far (although I should probably put Carter in the #1 spot). I'll keep chewing on the next 8.

Update, 04 Jan.2006 mid-afternoon: Me Muddah and I were talking about Jimmy Carter, & she decided that, beyond his performance as a president, his performance as an ex-president did greater harm, since he couldn't keep his fat mouth shut. The man who nearly completely and single-handedly set back Mideast negotiations by half a century and mangled the economy, the international trust and goodwill we thought we had, etc, etc, etc, still has the unmitigated gall to not only citicize the sitting POTUS, but to do so on foreign soil during wartime. Plus, his idiotic, incompetent "service" on the international elections committees effectively guaranteed us an unlawfully elected enemy in charge of Venezuela.

And, he lusted in his heart. Jeez.