SACRAMENTO, CA - California is a state with the size, population, and economic clout of a country. Californians have had to put up with a lot of bad government, but it still pays to ask the vital question of "compared to what?" Jimmy Carter, for instance.

PRI's Steven Hayward has provided a look at the Carter behind the glowing profiles on CNN. The Real Jimmy Carter (Regnery, 2004) bills the Georgian as "our worst ex-president," and makes a strong case. A good read for the election season, the account shows that from 1976-80, Carter was no great shakes on the job, which practically came by default.

As one observer put it, Carter was as close as we have come to picking a president from the phone book. The "Jimmy Who?" chapter shows how it happened, a precautionary tale. Carter emerges as an adept opportunist despite shaky records on race, segregation, and as governor of Georgia. Few realized that they should beware a southern liberal with peanut shells in his pants cuffs.

The Real Jimmy Carter provides a guided tour of Carter's domestic and foreign policy, a disaster on both fronts.
Runaway inflation was more than a statistic, and the endless gas lines were a direct result of Carter ineptitude. This was followed by scoldings from the White House, which made daily life a misery. That was particularly true in California, where the Carter malaise was such that sensible people were planning to become survivalists.

The escapades of Jimmy Carter were not played out in movies but in office. Hayward canvasses opinion on Carter's weirdness, including the president's claim to have been attacked by a "killer rabbit" while fishing in a pond. Readers will renew acquaintance with redneck brother Billy and White House staff such as Bert Lance and Hamilton Jordan, a man who mispronounced his own last name. The author has found some rare gems, such as Carter's staff passing over California congressman Norman Mineta for an event honoring the Japanese
prime minister because they believed Mineta was of Italian extraction.

The account should have included Midge Costanza, the verbose feminist Carter inflicted on the nation as the "presidential assistant for public liaison." The only northerner Carter appointed to the White House staff, Costanza once quipped that she didn't mind working for a president who thought he was reborn but she wondered why he wanted to come back as himself. Hayward's book answers that question.

Jimmy Carter is a practitioner of auto-hagiography who sees himself as a kind of president for life. That explains the groveling before totalitarians, the same trend that recently prompted Carter to certify a vote in favor of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's anti-American buffoon, while many Venezuelans were crying fraud. But then, the meddlesome Carter always blames America.

Readers of The Real Jimmy Carter will likely consider his 70s show quite enough. It will now be harder for the media to portray Carter as a saintly statesman. Californians will want to keep the record in mind when lamenting their own bad government. Compared to what indeed.

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K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He can be reached via
email at klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.