Jimmy Carter was an awful president. He wasn’t a crook like Joe Biden, but for actual presidential acts, he was perhaps the worst. Certainly, he was the worst ex-president.

In office, he did things like give away the Panama Canal, without retaining any control or even minimal security rights. Problems we are still dealing with right now.

Not to mention the disastrous China appeasement policy.  Wanting to recognize Red China was bad enough. But there was no reason to drop formal relations with Taiwan, the Republic of China. Many countries sent ambassadors to both. But no, Carter was always eager to help out the totalitarians.

He complained about our "inordinate fear of communism," allowing the Soviets to run wild across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, all while hollowing out our military.

He insisted on the basically meaningless Camp David Accords (Anwar Sadat had already kicked out the Soviets and determined to make friends with Israel) while helplessly watching the Shah being deposed and the Ayatollah’s terror regime seize power and take our hostages in Iran. 

His economy was an absolute disaster, as he piled on energy controls that worsened the oil crisis. Inflation combined with unemployment rates reached an all-time high.

As an ex-president he kept up the bad work, trying to sabotage President Bush's efforts in the Kuwait War, and even destroyed President Clinton’s diplomacy in North Korea. When Slick Willie is calling you a treasonous prick, you really messed up.

Carter also spent decades undermining Israel, most likely due to his anti-Semitism, and stupidly legitimizing the Venezuelan regime, just because he wanted the limelight. The tax-supported Carter Center meddling in the many phony Venezuelan elections finally came to an end this summer, as even Carter people admitted it was all rigged. Great, finally figured that one out! 

The reason Carter got away with all this was his amazingly two-faced personality. He pretended to be a humble country boy, but he was in reality an egomaniac of towering ambition.

He quit the Navy in the 1950s, understanding he didn’t have the skills to rise in that organization, to come home to run his father’s substantial business operations (not some just Podunk peanut farm). Soon, he was elected to the state senate and was cagey enough to be MIA for the civil rights battle. Remember, Georgia voted for George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election. He maneuvered himself onto segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox's ticket in 1971, as term limits forced Maddox to slide over to the lieutenant governor slot. Carter then used his time as governor to make friends with liberal national Democrats and groups like the Trilateral Commission.

When he ran for President in 1976, opponents noted he was on both sides of every issue, all things to all men. It's no surprise he was such a clueless leader when he reached the White House.

What really gets me though, are the shameless Carter attempts to take credit for the few good things that happened in the late 1970s. One was airline deregulation, the pet project of the CAB head Alfred Kahn. By that time, plane travel was so expensive and infrequent it was a no-brainer and supported by everybody in the capital.

As my old economics professor noted, it’s no coincidence national airplane travel was deregulated just as Washington D.C. was the one place in American with deregulated taxicabs. When it comes to their own costs and convenience, even very liberal Democrats in Congress like Ted Kennedy are in favor of free markets.

But worst of all, the Carter people are now trying to take credit for the Craft Beer boom and all the breweries and restaurants that followed. Essentially, the whole foodie culture of the last 50 years.

Sure, Carter signed H.R. 1337 that legalized home brewing and wine-making and opened up the country’s taste buds. This led in turn to some states allowing tap rooms and craft breweries and America reclaiming its world leading position in brewing and wine.

But H.R. 1337 was actually the brilliant work of the greatest Republican you never heard of -- Rep. Bill Steiger of Wisconsin. Steiger, even though he was in the minority party in the 1970s, was so smart and so articulate he ran rings around the Democrats and got all sorts of innovative conservative legislation passed.

This included the making of our modern, all-volunteer military; something they said couldn’t work post-Vietnam. And he pushed through the 1978 capital gains tax cut. The first real, supply-side tax cut in decades and the start of the Reagan Revolution.

It was a terrible tragedy for our country that he died at just 40 years old.  Had he lived, he might have gone on to be President; he almost certainly would have been a historic Speaker of the House.

Next week, they will put Jimmy Carter to rest in Plains, Georgia. You might join me, though, to raise a glass of quality American beer to toast Oshkosh, Wisconsin’s native son- the man who should have lived to 100.

Image: Library of Congress