When Former Presidents Assail the Chief
Former President Jimmy Carter was cited for a doozy over the weekend when he called the Bush administration “the worst in history” for its impact around the world. Though Mr. Carter tried to take it back on Monday, saying on the “Today” show that his remarks were “careless or misinterpreted” and that he was “not talking personally about any president,” he has still incited a tsk-tsking tsunami in the capital.
His offense: failing to observe the protocol that former presidents should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.
“His language was much sharper than what you’d normally hear” from an ex-president, said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. But he and other presidential scholars roll their eyes at the notion that former presidents do not speak ill of current ones.
“I love how because of our short memories, we come up with these eternal rules that don’t really apply,” said the historian Tim Naftali, the director-designate of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Indeed, there have been several instances of “when ex-presidents attack” over the years. As recently as a few months ago, former President Gerald R. Ford criticized Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy, albeit from the grave. In an article in The Washington Post, Bob Woodward quoted from an interview he conducted with Mr. Ford with the understanding that he could only publish Mr. Ford’s remarks after he died.