No wonder, Jimmy

In Casting a Vote for Peace, Jimmy Carter says,

In effect, peace efforts of a long line of previous administrations have been abandoned by President Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. For the last three years of his life, Mr. Arafat was incapacitated and held as a prisoner, humiliated by his physical incarceration and excluded by the other two leaders from any recognition as the legitimate head of the Palestinian community. Recognizing Mr. Arafat's failure to control violence among his people or to initiate helpful peace proposals, I use the word "legitimate" based on his victory in January 1996 by a strong majority of votes in an election monitored by the Carter Center and approved by the occupying Israelis.

In Elections: Who Needs 'Em? James Taranto ripostes:

Now that George W. Bush has won an undisputed election, what if he were to cancel the elections in 2008 and thereafter and simply declare himself president for life? It sounds like a left-wing paranoid fantasy, but Jimmy Carter endorses the idea....

It's true that Arafat in 1996, like Bush this year, won a strong majority of the votes in an election that featured no serious opposition. But as we noted in May 2002, new elections were due in 1999, and Arafat never held them. We hope and expect that Bush will leave office on schedule, on Jan. 20, 2009--but if he doesn't, it would be "legitimate" by Carter's lights.

Come to think of it, we'll bet Carter is kicking himself for not thinking of this 25 years earlier.

Haw. True, Bush might've tried more to help (although he might not have succeeded). I used to think that Carter was just ineffective and naive. But it's not just his inviting Micheal Moore as his guest at a Democratic Party event. Writing in the New Republic of 7/11/94, Joshua Muravchik noted that Carter's

journey to North Korea enabled him to "observe [the North Koreans'] psyche and their societal structure and the reverence with which they look upon their leader." The reverence for Kim Il Sung seems understandable on the basis of Carter's impressions: "I found him to be vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues and in charge of the decisions about this country." As for the country Carter reported that in North Korea, "people were very friendly and open." The capital, Pyongyang, is a "bustling city," where shoppers "pack the department stores," which look like "Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia." "They are really heavily into bright neon lights," reported the former president...

He said of the Romanian dictator [Nicolae Ceausescu]: "Our goals are the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources. We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people."

No wonder he cut off diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The government wasn't repressive and dictatorial enough!