The dinner party is never the same when the crazy old uncle who has been asked to stay in his room in the basement suddenly emerges and starts breaking the family china and chasing the teenage girls around the house. When the guests have left, the unavoidable question is: who let Uncle Jimmy out?

I've been thinking about this question in connection with former president Jimmy Carter's recent visit with the Islamic radical group Hamas. Condoleeza Rice says that the U.S. State department made it clear to Carter that Hamas is a terrorist group. U.S. policy is not to talk to terrorists. Carter says he got no clear message, since his telegram was not composed in all capital letters. And so Uncle Jimmy put on his best Sunday suit and decided to pay his Muslim friends a visit.

Actually, I don't agree with America's policy of "not talking" to these groups. Hamas won a free election in Gaza. If you want to address the issue of a Palestinian state, it's hard to exclude Hamas from the equation. Carter, however, is hardly the guy you want doing the negotiating. He hasn't been in office for a quarter of a century. He has no authority to speak for America. This tourism was entirely Uncle Jimmy's idea.

Carter says he was on a "fact finding" mission. And he did indeed return from the Middle East having learned some important new facts. 1) Hamas is made up of Muslims. 2) Hamas kills people. 3) Hamas doesn't like the state of Israel. I recall Carter's memoir written after his presidency which was full of similar great discoveries. Carter recalled the early days of his presidency when he got to do all kinds of exciting things: "Today I got to ride in my own White House airplane!" "Yippee! On Friday I get to meet Anwar Sadat!"

We all want to be nice to old Uncle Jimmy, given that he's in the sunset of his years and his judgment isn't so good. But then his judgment never was any good. Let's remember that it was Carter who, in the name of human rights, began in the late 1970s to withdraw American support for our ally the Shah of Iran. When the mullahs became emboldened, it was the Carter State Department that refused to sell the Shah tear gas to get these fanatics off the street. When the Shah's position weakened, it was Carter who encouraged him to abdicate. In trying to get rid of the bad guy--the Shah--America got the worse guy: Khomeini. This blunder gave radical Islam control of its first major state.

Are we going to make the same mistake again in Iraq? Yes, it's a bad situation over there, but are we going to try and solve the problem by pulling out and finding that the situation gets worse for them and for us? Carter is back at home and on his pills, but there is a new fellow running for president who sounds a lot like Jimmy. He's new and untested. His slogan is "change." He wants to wipe the slate clean in Washington, to purify us from our sinful past. He sounds more than a little self-righteous. The media and his followers think he wears a halo. And yet early indications are that he is not what he seems, and his political judgment can be immature and reckless. History may be repeating itself.

We had President Jimmy Carter on The Young Turks this morning. He said that this Bush administration is far more radical than anything Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush ever did. So, I asked him if he would rather re-do his 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan or the 2000 election where George Bush beat Al Gore.

His answer is right here:




Cenk Uygur: If you had to redo the 1980 election, where Ronald Reagan won, of course up against you, or redo the 2000 election where George Bush defeated Al Gore, which one would you redo?

President Carter: Well knowing what I know now, and knowing the wonderful experiences I've had at the Carter Center in the last 25 years, I would say I would redo the 2000 election. That, you know, I think has had a profoundly adverse effect on our country, and I've had a personal gratifying experience with my wife and many other people at the Carter Center. That in time, that has healed the disappointment that we felt in not getting elected in 1980.


You can watch the whole interview here.

President Carter is right. This is not about being a Republican or a Democrat. This is a truly radical administration that has gone far beyond anything we've seen in this country. It is amazing and profoundly disappointing that the press, and apparently the opposition party, can't see this as clear as the American people (that's why Bush is the most consistently unpopular president of all time) and those outside DC.

Watch More Young Turks Clips Here

Bill Maher wrapped up the season of Real Time with this New Rule for Jimmy Carter.

Keith Olbermann is visibly upset but the pussification of the Democrats. Watch the video, or read the transcript.

Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show also touched this topic, along with the Jimmy Carter discussion.

House, Senate pass war funding bill - CNN

• Senate vote was 80-14; House vote was 280-142
• Bill funds military operations -- mostly in Iraq -- through September
• Bush has said he will support it; he will now receive it
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi voted against the bill

I'm glad to see that Carter is backtracking. Now he says he didn't mean to compare Bush too all previous presidents, just to Nixon. Yes, Nixon had some impressive foreign policy achievements: his opening to China, his Middle East diplomacy, his sophisticated dealings with the Soviets. Bush may yet surpass those if he can turn things around in Iraq. Bush is trying something truly big, truly epochal. He is not even competing in the Nixonian realm. He is going for the upper reaches of presidential history. He may fail, but you have to admire him for trying.

We'll never know, I suppose, why Carter revised his earlier statement. Could it be because Carter fears that history will forget about him altogether? At least now he is the current holder of the title of worst president in recent memory. If he concedes that to Bush, what's left of Peanut Jimmy?

We all know what a lousy president Carter was. One indicator: a sitting president could only win six states against Ronald Reagan in 1980. Another indicator: even Democrats won't defend his presidency. But Carter has somehow convinced the pundits that he's one of America's best ex-presidents.

This may be intended as a consolation prize--history doesn't exactly care about ex-presidents--but I think it's undeserved. Carter is, in living memory, the worst ex-president. The best ex-president, strangely enough, is Nixon. Yes, Nixon. Other presidents (Ford, Bush Senior, Clinton) enjoyed private life and earned lots of money on speeches. Nixon employed his undisputed intelligence and expertise to write a series of important books on foreign policy.

Carter has basically become a national nuisance. Yes, I admire him for his home-building with Habitat for Humanity. But how many homes has he built lately? He is constantly meddling in foreign policy with inane statements that only remind us of why we threw him out on the street.

When I was writing my book on Reagan in the mid-1990s, I contacted Jimmy Carter's office in Atlanta. I wanted to see what some of Reagan's old adversaries found attractive or effective about Reagan. Most of them praised Reagan's large-heartedness, or his vision, or the way he got things done. Even Gorbachev paid his compliments. But not Carter. He could not find one nice thing to say about Reagan. This was especially churlish because Reagan had recently showed up to dedicate the Carter Center in Atlanta. Reagan was gracious to Carter, but even a decade and a half later, Carter could not be gracious to Reagan.

Today's article citing Iran's foreign minister saying Iran will never halt its nuclear program prods me to look forward and reflect on what plausible course of action would deter this radical Islamic state from getting its hands on a nuclear bomb. But even as I contemplate our not-very-good options in Iran, my mind goes back to the question of how we got ourselves into this big mess.

It all started with Khomeini, who invented modern Islamic radicalism by becoming the first radical Muslim to seize control of a major country. Khomeini is the first Islamic leader to call America the Great Satan, and he is the first to counsel a worldwide jihad of Muslims against the United States. To this day Iran remains a model of what the Bin Laden guys would like to see throughout the Muslim world, and Iran's nuclear aspirations have sent a new wave of fear through America, Europe and Israel which could all be future targets.