AP reports:

Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. …

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper’s Saturday editions. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

Outgoing British PM Tony Blair also came in for criticism from the little peanut farmer from Plains:

Asked how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, the former president said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient.”

“And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,” Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

I would call this a truly remarkable case of reporting so partisan that it simply becomes ludicrous.

Personally, I think there can be no doubt whatsoever that the worst president in United States history, both domestically and in foreign policy, was Mr. Carter himself.

The Carter administration’s supine failure to do anything effective in response to the revolutionary government of Iran’s taking US diplomatic personnel hostage, and the spectacle of the United States humiliated by a Third World country holding 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days is unquestionably the absolute US foreign policy nadir of all time.

The same president managed also to preside over double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy, and an energy crisis. During Mr. Carter’s term, the prime rate hit 21.5%.

Astonishingly, Mr. Carter has managed to continue to distinguish himself with respect to all other US presidents by bustling around the world to confer a personal endorsement of the validity of elections stolen by leftwing dictators, by championing continually the causes of the adversaries of the United States, and by an unprecedented (and ungentlemanly) habit of voicing open criticism of his successors.

AP demonstrates its own contemptible lack of journalistic integrity by openly lying to its readers, putting a claim into the mouth of an unidentified Carter “biographer” that today’s attack on the Bush Administration “is unprecedented.” Carter’s unseemly and disloyal attacks on the current president have not only been frequent but inveterate.

I recall noting the sour expression on Jimmy Carter’s wizened face as he watched with visible envy the outpouring of national grief during the funeral of Ronald Reagan. I’m sure he was thinking ahead, disgruntled over the obvious truth that the nation would have no similar response in his own case.

On the contrary, I expect there will only be a collective shrug, and a momentary thought of “Good riddance” from most Americans when Mr. Carter’s time comes.