WSJ Opinion Journal

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal had this excellent (and humorous!) article:

One Man's Ghost Is Another's Statesman
President Bush, naturally, didn't deign to answer Jimmy Carter's latest cavils, but a spokesman, Tony Fratto, did say this: "I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless personal criticism is out there. I think it's unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments."
This prompted the following hilarious observation from Reuters:

Carter has been an outspoken critic of Bush, but the White House has largely refrained from attacking him in return. Sunday's sharp response marks a departure from the deference that sitting presidents traditionally have shown their predecessors.

In the fun-house world of Reuterville, Osama bin Laden is a "freedom fighter," and the tradition of ex-presidents to defer to the current president is flipped on its head.
The Carter problem was anticipated by Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist No. 72:

Would it promote the peace of the community, or the stability of the government to have half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the people like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place which they were destined never more to possess?

Hamilton was actually arguing against term limits for the president--the idea being that bitter exes, barred by law from seeking the office again, would, well, go around acting like Jimmy Carter.

But what's Carter's excuse? He served only one term, so there is no constitutional bar to his being elected again. Why doesn't Carter put his money where his mouth is and seek the Democratic presidential nomination? After all, he's only a few years older than Mike Gravel, and he may be the only guy who can beat Hillary Clinton. He's been against the Iraq war since at least 1991, when Barack Obama was in diapers and Al Gore was a neocon war monger.

As Hamilton noted, "There is no nation which has not, at one period or another, experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular men in particular situations; perhaps it would not be too strong to say, to the preservation of its political existence." Jimmy Carter, your country needs you!