Carter, With His Slam at Bush, Breaks Code of Ex-Presidents - Yahoo! News

Carter, With His Slam at Bush, Breaks Code of Ex-Presidents - Yahoo! News: "Carter, With His Slam at Bush, Breaks Code of Ex-Presidents " May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Former President Jimmy Carter broke an unwritten code when he leveled criticism at President George W. Bush' Mr. Carter is bending, if not breaking, a century-long tradition,'' said Lee Edwards, a presidential historian at the Heritage Foundation, a policy research organization in Washington. ``You'd have to go back to Theodore Roosevelt, who was so upset about William Taft that he ran for president against him in 1912.'' Except in the heat of a campaign, former presidents typically refrain from directly criticizing the policies of their sitting successors, and personal criticism is rare. Several historians said they were hard-pressed to cite recent examples on a par with the flap between Carter, 82, and Bush. ``Harry Truman didn't like Eisenhower much, but he kind of kept his tongue about Ike,'' said presidential historian and biographer Robert Dallek, referring to the 33rd and 34th presidents. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted Carter on May 19 as saying that Bush's record on international relations was ``the worst in history.'' That opened a squabble with the Bush administration: White House spokesman Tony Fratto on May 20 called the remarks ``reckless'' and told reporters that Carter, president from 1977 until 1981, was ``proving to be increasingly irrelevant.'' `Careless or Misinterpreted' Carter, speaking on NBC's ``Today Show'' yesterday, said his remarks were ``careless or misinterpreted,'' and Bush declined to directly address them at a news conference later in the day. Before Carter's comments, historians said, the most recent war of words among presidents was probably the one between Roosevelt, the 26th president, and Taft, his former friend and fellow Republican. Once out of office, Roosevelt became increasingly critical of his successor's policies, prompting him to challenge Taft's nomination for a second term in 1912. ``Both men hurled vicious epithets at each other,'' the late James Chace, a professor at Bard College in Annandale-on- Hudson, New York, wrote in ``1912,'' his book about the campaign. ``Taft branded Roosevelt a `dangerous egotist,' a `demagogue,' and a `flatterer of the people.' Roosevelt called the president a `puzzlewit' and a 'fathead' whose intellect was little short of a guinea pig's.'' Splitting the Vote When Roosevelt failed to wrest the nomination, he mounted a third-party challenge. With the Republican vote split, Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected. More often, former presidents save their harshest opinions for posterity. That's what Truman, president from 1945 to 1953, did with his feelings about successor Eisenhower. ``Ike didn't know anything, and all the time he was in office he didn't learn a thing,'' Truman said in ``Plain Speaking'' by Merle Miller, an ``oral biography'' published after both men's deaths. Another successor fared even worse: Richard Nixon' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Richard Nixon, Truman said, was ``a shifty-eyed, goddamn liar.'' The more recent trend has been toward onetime political rivals forming close ties once they're out of office. Carter and the late President Gerald Ford, the Republican he defeated, became friends. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, 82, and the man who defeated him, Bill Clinton' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Bill Clinton, have developed what Clinton, 60, has described as a father-son-like bond. Ford held back his own criticisms of the current President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush, 60, other presidents and the current state of his party, offering them in interviews only on the condition that they not be published until after his death. After Ford died last December, the Washington Post reported that Ford viewed Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iraq as a ``big mistake.'' `Exclusive Club' ``Former presidents are extremely cautious, avoiding big, dramatic public declarations,'' said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Boston University. The men who can claim the presidency ``realize they are a very exclusive club and should be statesmen rather than politicians,'' Edwards said. While remarks such as Carter's are unusual for a former president, they aren't entirely atypical for him. At the 2004 Democratic convention, the Georgian said the Bush administration squandered international goodwill following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ``by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations.'' `A Burr Under His Saddle' ``Carter just feels very strongly that Bush has done a terrible job,'' said Erwin Hargrove, a retired political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. ``He's got a burr under his saddle about W, that's all.'' Carter's history also shows a tendency to ``say things without thinking,'' Hargrove said. ``He's generally a very nice man, but he has that side where he just lets it rip.'' Dallek said Bush's foreign policy ``has been so provocative to so many people'' that Carter ``vented his spleen.'' The former president yesterday said his characterization of Bush's policies came in response to a question about Nixon. ``This administration's foreign policy, compared to President Nixon's, was much worse,'' Carter said on NBC. ``I wasn't comparing this administration with other administrations back through history but just with President Nixon's.'' The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette posted an audio clip on its Web site from the original interview. ``If President Carter's remarks are careless or misinterpreted, they are not misinterpreted by us,'' Frank Fellone, deputy editor of the Little Rock newspaper, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, said on NBC that he's ``been very careful, and still am, not to criticize any president personally.'' To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at Cdodge1@bloomberg.net