Voters Say Carter Is Best of Living Ex-Presidents Say what? How could this be?

Of course it’s all in the details. The data relate to living ex-presidents and their performance since leaving the White House. It is not a referendum on their presidencies, although I am sure it will be reported as this by some. According to Rasmussen:

Democrats are much more supportive of the presidents from their party than Republicans are, although Clinton is the favorite of Democratic voters over Carter by a 48% to 41% margin. The two GOP presidents get single-digit support.

Among Republicans, 35% rate the first President Bush as best, while 20% feel that way about his son. But 22% like Carter best and 13% favor Clinton.

Voters not affiliated with either party rank the ex-presidents as follows: Carter (33%), George H.W. Bush (28%), Clinton (21%) and George W. Bush (4%).

So let’s see – Dems only have two, Republicans have two, and it’s no surprise that Dems prefer Clinton over Carter. I’m surprised that Republicans prefer Carter over Clinton, given Clinton’s recent North Korean hostage return success and Carter’s out-of-office behavior. As for independents, there’s still quite a bit of negative sentiment towards George W. Bush that probably skews the results.

So what has Carter done as an ex-president? Built houses with Habitat for Humanity? Ok, that’s a huge positive. Conducted his own foreign policy? Certified the election of his dictator buddy Hugo Chavez? Broken the unwritten rule about ex-Presidents criticizing current Oval Office holders? There’s three big negatives.

There’s one other positive though, which Doug Power’s post at MichelleMalkin.com sums up nicely:

The best thing that Jimmy Carter ever did for America was to leave office, and as such he’s not only the best living ex-president, but possibly the best ex-president ever.

This is a worthy piece of feel-good legislation, but the junior senator from Minnesota will have to take principled positions that may be different from his party’s Senate leadership before he repairs his ‘I stole the seat’ image. CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Franken’s first goal: Dogs for vets « – Blogs from CNN.com.

Yes, this is cute and whimsical, and even though I think a camel is a horse designed by committee, I have nothing against them or anyone who has them as a pet/companion animal/working animal (did I cover all the bases?)

Of course, camels are preferred in the remote mountainous areas of the world, such as the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a favorite spot of the Taliban and their back to the stone age terrorist friends.  I can see them sitting in a cave around a fire, generators going, watching this and smiling knowingly.  Anyone for a little camel diplomacy?

Ahh, the memories of using an ASR 33 with a paper tape reader/puncher.  We had a PDP-8 in our High School, and I still recall sitting in front at the console entering in part of the initial OS load sequence (enter the address, then the instruction) using the toggle switches on the system control panel.  Years later I worked for DEC and had the pleasure of having the author of the DEC programming handbooks as a colleague. I still have at least one, somewhere…

The Laptop, Circa 1968 | Technologizer.