Though he took office at a terrible time, Jimmy Carter did not help matters much. Carter seemed to think he was smarter and more knowledgeable than all of his advisors which resulted in a failure to properly delegate authority and a bottlenecked decision making process. (In this aspect, Carter was a preview of what a Gore Administration might have been.) His sole material success was the Camp David Accords, which was certainly no small feat. The treaty ended the war between Israel and Egypt in exchange for Egyptian recognition of Israel's political existence. Egypt being Egypt, this had a profound effect in the Arab and Islamic World; nevertheless, notwithstanding this notable achievement, Carter's failures are glaring. His boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980 was no more than a nominal act, resulting in a retaliatory boycott of the Los Angeles Games in 1984 and an erosion of the very concept of global cooperation at some level. Furthermore, he had no clue as to how to handle the Iranian Hostage Crisis, setting back the American global position of strength, resulting in an overly complex and doomed hostage rescue mission that only served to emphasis this appearance of being impotent and incompetent (though Carter had no other viable choice but to listen to his advisors regarding the details of the mission). Furthermore, Carter failed to get a handle on the inflationary pressures that were plaguing the economy. In the end, Carter exacerbated an already bad situation, resulting in a demand for new patriotism that swept in the Reagan Era. Furthermore, Carter has subsequently tainted a respectable life as an ex-president by breaking the unofficial gentlemen's agreement by publicly criticizing the current administration, notwithstanding the fact that some of his criticisms may have merit.

If we would have followed Carters plan, we would be Energy independant by now. The pain would be over, and we would have a thriving alternative Energy Industry that the world would envy. Brazil listened, but we didn't. We had morning in America. How much longer can we ignore the inevitable.

Certainly the best of our living ex-presidents anyway. The only president with the balls to attempt to clean out the CIA.

Wasn't Jimmy the Joke an engineer (see Hoover.)?

He's better than the other 9 one-term presidents mentioned here. He did have flaws in his presidency, but he was a good and decent man who cared about the indigent. He admitted that he wasn't proud of himself when he alienated his party and ran independently. But give him credit for not dropping a bomb on another country, give him credit for toughening his stance against right-wing dictators and for continuing the work on his post-presidency. He's a moral leader who led by example.

He was a failure as president, doing little to encourage a recovery from the Vietnam/Watergate era. He really shouldn't be blamed though. He was presient at a time when the media and Congress had led a successful coup d'etat against a strong president -leading to the massacre of millions in Southeast Asia by the North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge, but that's a story for another place. Carter was a nice, friendly, but weak man at a time when Congress was in charge and would not tolerate an executive with a backbone. I'd say Carter was more conservative president than Nixon had been, but given the political reality he had to be. The only good thing Carter did was begining the process of deregulation which continued during the Reagan-era. Carter used to be a good ex-president but in the last few years, he has completely gone off the deep end.