Jimmy Carter, "increasingly irrelevant"

As reported in the Washington Post today, a White House spokesman stated that Jimmy Carter's continued criticism of Bush (which he has been doing since 2002) is making him "increasingly irrelevant" in the global spectrum.

Increasingly irrelevant? The only relevance Carter holds in my eyes is that he was the last Democratic presidential candidate my father ever voted for (back in 1976, and I still give my father grief over that).

The former peanut farmer from Georgia has attempted to take some of the tarnish off of his miserable failure of a presidency by becoming a face for global humanitarianism. What Carter should know that his tenure as a president produced one long-lasting positive effect (The Camp David Accords), and but several missteps/bad policies/failures, a few notable issues that had a negative effect on America during Carter's tenure include...

- Signing away the Panama Canal
- Cancelling the B-1 bomber project (resurrected by Reagan)
- Prime rate hit as high as 21.5% (it was 8.25% as of May 2, 2007)
- Double-digit inflation, partially due to Carter's economic policies
- Mismanagement of the Iran Hostage Crisis
- Raised taxes, including a large increase in the Social Security Tax

By 1980, the country dumped him out of office and replaced him with a man who became, in my eyes, the greatest president we've ever had. I think you all know who I'm referring to.

A lot of younger Democrats love to state that our country has never been in such bad shape as it has been under George W. Bush. However, none of them know what things were like under Jimmy Carter (nor do they care to look it up, either), they only know Carter for his post-presidency trips to foreign nations and his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. People may complain about how interest rates may have risen a little bit in the past 6 years...but when I think about a prime rate of 21.5%, it makes me shudder.

Jimmy Carter isn't totally irrelevant...he's more of a bad nightmare that we vaguely remember.