JOHN BRUMMETT Advertisement

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock has a full-time religion writer. Jimmy Carter is a full-time religious man who happens to be promoting audiobooks of his Sunday school lessons at his Baptist church in Plains.

Given the opportunity for what we in the business call a "phoner" with the former president, the Little Rock newspaper put its full-time religion correspondent on the line.

This would be church talk from a religious man to a religion chronicler. It seemed a ripe opportunity for yawn material for the inside church spread Saturday.

So what happened? Lord have mercy -- that's what happened.

Big international news got made. You can hear the relevant snippet for yourself at the religion writer's biblebeltblog.com.

Carter speaks with typical softness in explaining that he sometimes ties his Sunday school lessons to public issues, such as our country's unwarranted invasion of Iraq. The religion writer then asks something that strikes me as a tad from left field: "Which president is worse, George W. Bush or Richard Nixon?"

It was more tactful than asking: Who was worse -- George W. or you, with your hostages and stagflation?

Carter proceeds to say that George W. is the "worst in history," not necessarily altogether, but in international relations.

There is unwritten protocol that former presidents don't criticize each other or the current one, or that they at least deploy understatement and maintain courtesy. It's not always been observed. The New York Times reminds that Teddy Roosevelt called William Howard Taft a "fathead."

Still, for a former president to call the current one the worst ever, on anything -- it jars you, even if you'd been thinking the same thing.

My assessment was that Carter had spoken without full respect for the power of his words. Perhaps he was lulled by the fact that he was talking to a church reporter for a Little Rock paper. Perhaps he's simply not as politically savvy as he once was. Or maybe he is, now that you think about it.

I envisioned upon reading the remarks that Carter would end up backtracking on account of a furor and that the Little Rock paper would find it advisable to produce recordings or transcripts to exonerate the reporting.

Both happened. Carter went on a morning television talk show Monday to assert that he'd intended only to respond to a question to compare Bush to Nixon, not the whole presidential field, and to address the question in narrow terms of international relations. He said he'd been "careless" or "misinterpreted."

He can only blame his carelessness, not our interpretation.

The aforementioned snippet plainly shows that, while the question was indeed about Nixon, it was about all-around unfitness. And it plainly shows that Carter went his own way and answered of his own unprompted volition, not in the context of Nixon, but for all of American presidential history, and not generally, but in the specific area of international affairs.

Carter spoke indelicately, which is not to say inaccurately.

George W.'s superficial swaggering arrogance has alienated much of the world and many of our staunchest friends. And, after all, he did invade Iraq for no reason, tragically exacerbating the war he should have been waging against terrorists. Domestically, he has newly politicized the Justice Department and turned over regulation to regulatees.

It may well be that Bush is our worst president ever, altogether. But you simply cannot make historical judgments of that sort on a work in progress.

If we get out of Iraq by leaving behind a functioning democracy and reasonably peaceful society, George W. will not be the worst president ever.

In the very large chance that doesn't happen, the church-page editor's scoop will stand the test of time.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of ÒHigh Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.