Former president Jimmy Carter is doing one terrific job.  So reports the Associated Press today in its "Carter finds happiness in foreign missions."  According to the article:

Since leaving the White House, he's logged millions of miles and visited dozens of countries on missions to wipe out diseases, mediate conflicts, advocate for human rights and monitor elections. He's built a legacy that few, if any, American ex-presidents can match.

Writer Greg Bluestein found a few observers to comment on the wonders of Mr. Jimmy:

Walter Mondale, his vice president, says that Carter took the political heat up front "so we could all be better off." Andrew Young, Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, says it might take a few more decades for historians to realize the impact of Carter's term in office.

"It took 100 years to understand Jefferson. It took 100 years for people outside the North to understand Lincoln. And it's got to take at least 50 years to understand Carter," says Young.

And Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University history professor who has written a book about Carter, says Carter's presidency may be more fondly remembered overseas than at home.

"Pick the country - they view him as one of the most successful presidents," said Brinkley. "He has helped America's image around the world because he's been able to make everyone trust him. And he earns that trust because he's honest"

Before buying into this effort to rehabilitate the reputation of - until Barack Obama came along - the worst president in many decades, we may want to reflect on Carter's post-presidency.  The late New York Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan had Carter's number in 1980: "Being unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, Carter has adopted our enemies' view of the world."  When the first President Bush asked for United Nations action in the Persian Gulf, Carter wrote to world leaders trying to block it.  Even Carter later admitted his effort "was not appropriate perhaps."  According to ABC News earlier this year:

In the 90s (President Bill) Clinton was said to resent some of Carter’s freelance diplomacy.

In a 1998 Time Magazine piece, Lance Morrow wrote of Carter:

Some of his Lone Ranger work has taken him dangerously close to the neighborhood of what we used to call treason.

Long proclaiming his unswerving devotion to human rights, Carter has over the years cozied up to the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Yasser Arafat.  National Review Online's Jay Nordlinger observed in 2002:

While in North Korea, Carter lauded Kim Il Sung, one of the most complete and destructive dictators in history. Said Carter, "I find him to be vigorous, intelligent,...and in charge of the decisions about this country" (well, he was absolute ruler). He said, "I don't see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation." Pyongyang, he observed, was a "bustling city," where shoppers "pack the department stores," reminding him of the "Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia."

The Associated Press is correct in one point:  Carter's established quite a legacy for himself.  But it's far from an admirable one and, if we're fortunate, other former presidents won't try to match it.

"It's like déjà vu all over again," noted philosopher Yogi Berra is credited with saying. And so it is.

A liberal Democratic president has his heart set on pushing through a proposal strongly unpopular with most Americans. Enjoying substantial Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, he intends to win.

So it was in September, 1977 when Jimmy Carter signed the Panama Canal treaties to relinquish United States control. An Associated Press opinion poll conducted that month found that only 29 percent of Americans favored the pact. A solid 50 percent opposed it and 21 percent expressed no opinion.

Just as Barack Obama is determined to shove a government health care program down the throats of his protesting countrymen, Carter did what was necessary to get the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties. He cajoled, he promised, he threatened. It worked.

Carter was understandably jubilant when in early 1978 he received one vote more than the 67 necessary to approve the first of the two treaties. He hailed it as "a victory for the American people." That may sound vaguely familiar. It's how Barack Obama described his own 2008 election.

In a 1991 interview, Jimmy Carter talked about his triumph:

"I never go through a week of my life now that I don't get letters from people condemning the Panama Canal Treaties. Still, and this is I don't know how many years later. 1978? Thirteen years later. But it was a good thing to do."

He went on to describe the aftermath:

"It is the most courageous thing that the U.S. Senate ever did in its existence. They knew that it was politically unpopular, but they knew that it was right and needed. Of the 20 senators who voted for the Canal Treaties in 1978, who were up for re-election the next year, only seven of them came back. Thirteen of them didn't come back. And the attrition rate in 1980 was almost as bad."

The Boston Globe reported in February, 1981 that "the new Senate that took office this year sees the absence, by retirement or defeat, of 28 senators who supported the treaties." In only three years, 28 of the 68 senators who did what Carter deemed "right and needed" and what the public opposed were gone.

As was Carter. He was such a dismal failure in so many ways, it's impossible to attribute his defeat to any one action or event. Jimmy had pummeled President Jerry Ford over the "misery index," a combination of the inflation and unemployment rates. Four years of Carter resulted in the index shooting up from 13% to more than 20%. By itself, inflation stood at 13.58% in Carter's last year in office.

Yet another factor had to have been Carter's successful effort to turn the Panama Canal over to a leftist dictator carrying the title of "Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution." Americans didn't want that to happen, but a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress didn't care.

Which brings us to now. Another Democratic president and another Democratic Congress don't care that Americans oppose a government health care system disguised as reform.

With their elitist mentality, they genuinely believe they know better than we do what's best for us. If it takes hiding from constituents, fine. If it takes lying about what their plans entail, OK. If it takes cajoling, promising, threatening, it's just part of doing what they've decided is right and needed.

If the president succeeds in imposing ObamaCare, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. All those Americans held in such contempt by the liberal establishment will be at the polls next year and in 2012. They'll remember how they were disrespected and ignored. And Obama & Co. will have no one to blame but themselves for ignoring a lesson of the Carter years.

Today's Parade Magazine names "The World's 10 Worst Dictators."  Topping the list is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe:

Inflation in Zimbabwe is so bad that in January the government released a $50 billion note — enough to buy two loaves of bread. The unemployment rate has risen to more than 85%. In 2008, Mugabe agreed to hold an election, but it became clear that he would accept the result only if he won. His supporters launched attacks on the opposition, killing 163 and torturing or beating 5000. He ultimately signed a power-sharing agreement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but since then Mugabe has broken its terms and installed his own people at the head of every ministry. Meanwhile, health conditions have reached crisis levels. More than 3800 Zimbabweans have died from cholera since August.

U.S. link: Although U.S. leaders have called for Mugabe’s resignation, imports from Zimbabwe (primarily nickel and ferrochromium, both used in stainless steel) rose in 2008.

There's actually much more of a U.S. link than that.  Unmentioned is the role played by former president Jimmy Carter and other liberals.  The Boston Globe reported in December, 1979 that "Carter Administration officials feel they have scored a major foreign policy success in Rhodesia."  (Zimbabwe was formerly known as Rhodesia). The purported success was a settlement that set the stage for Mugabe's rise to power.  This was months after the Washington Post described him as a "scholarly, avowed Marxist."

In August, 1980, Carter's former UN ambassador Andrew Young wrote in the Washington Post of "Mugabe's Endorsement:"

The president's best investment of the past four years has just begun to pay off.  The visit of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Robert Mugabe sparked an enthusiasm in black America that may well rekindle the fires that Jimmy Carter so desperately needs for reelection.

Here is a president, being questioned by the liberal wing of his own party for supposedly abandoning his commitment to human rights at home and abroad, suddenly receiving accolades from Robert Mugabe -- Africa's "black diamond" -- for making a truly non-racial democracy possible in southern Africa.

Young went on to relate how enthusiastically the "black diamond" was received in Harlem, at Howard University, and by New York's Foreign Policy Association.  He continued:

Zimbabwe may have given the American people the vote of confidence needed to get out of the present paralyzing cynicism and to begin building at home and abroad the dream of free men and women, of a world of peace and prosperity.

Support for Mugabe was echoed by the mainstream media.  The New York Times claimed that ""Mr. Mugabe has quickly established himself as an African statesman of the first rank."  An April, 1981 piece in the Washington Post noted:

Many whites admit that before last year's election they expected to flee in the event of a Mugabe victory.  Most were stunned by his landslide win after listening to years of propaganda proclaiming he was "a godless Marxist." Now, many are pleasantly surprised at how well things have gone in the first year of rule by the country's black majority of 7 million.

Weeks later the Boston Globe editorialized:

There is a temptation to be over optimistic about the future of Zimbabwe, the year-old black-ruled nation that was once Rhodesia, because so much of the future of southern Africa pivots on its success. Two recent events made some optimism seem justified.

Mugabe's Marxist, dictatorial tendencies were apparent from the beginning.  Jimmy Carter, who visited the White House just last week, and other liberals chose to ignore them then.  Parade would have performed its readers a service by briefly recapping the details of how Mugabe was given the chance to assume the title of world's worst dictator.