Public opinion data from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute usually has a historical kicker, and that's exactly what makes reading its surveys fascinating. In a June 2006 poll, Qunnipiac tried to establish which of the eleven American presidents since 1945 were considered the best and which the worst. As it turned out, Ronald Reagan did best as the best in this count, but only because Republicans picked him overwhelmingly. Bill Clinton came in second but only because Democrats chose him overwhelmingly, though less overwhelmingly than Republicans favored Reagan. George W. Bush won the worst president contest even though only 7 percent of polled Republicans thought he was that bad. Still, in virtually every analytic category, by sex, by religion (including evangelicals and born-agains), by age, nobody seems to respect him very much. The worst president category is, in a way, the most interesting. While Bush Senior didn't fare especially well in the best president race, he didn't fare especially badly in the worst president competition. Not many seem to have any impression of Dwight Eisenhower. But it's probably not that he has dimmed in the memories of the American people. They remember his predecessor, Harry Truman, and a decent amount more favorably. They still recall Richard Nixon. Almost nobody sees him in a favorable light and many as the worst president, though behind the current Bush incumbent. So what am I leading up to? You are asking. How did Jimmy Carter fare? Terribly. Almost no one thought him to be the best president, not even among Democrats. But among others and in his "worst" candidacy, he's just up there below Nixon. Take a look. Here I'll confess to great satisfaction. I always thought Carter a simpering wimp, self-righteous, self-pitying, hectoring, just the kind of person who thought he might outwit or maybe even terrify the Ayatollah Khomeini by having the American people put yellow ribbons on their dresses, lapels, tree trunks, doors, windows, cars, kids, whatever, the more the better. Peanut farmer, engineer, he seemed to me to be a simpleton. I suppose I voted for him in 1976. But I didn't in 1980. My memory is that I voted for independent candidate John B. Anderson, also a goody-goody, whom TNR actually endorsed. I recall that Mort Kondracke wrote the editorial. On second thought, I might have actually voted for Ronald Reagan, who seemed to me to have always understood the Soviet enemy. Seriously, I do not recall. In any case, in my home state of Massachusetts, Anderson polled well enough to give its electoral votes to Reagan. Jimmy and Rosalynn are now carpenters for Habitat for Humanity, and there is no mischief in this work. But Carter is always ready to take up some foreign policy issue, and his favorite issue is how awful the Jews are to the Arabs. Now, recall that his favorite Middle Eastern politician was Hafaz Assad, the long-ruling tyrant in Damascus. My God, I can recall so many idiocies of Carter that, if I continue down this road, I won't finish this Spine until mid-morning. So let me just leave you with his latest. You see, Jimmy Carter is also an author, and he has now published a book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, with Simon and Schuster. Oh, so brave. Jimmy Carter has called Israel an apartheid state, just like the rulers of Arab states and the leaders of Arab terrorist movements that have not the slightest impulse to render their communities socially just. The apartheid libel is deceitful. There is nothing remotely like apartheid in the State of Israel, nothing, and I defy anyone to cite argument that would stand up to standards of evidence and of logic. As for the territories, it is an historical struggle over land most of which, as any honest person will admit, Israel would be content to relinquish if that would bring some semblance of peace. Whatever Carter and his former aide, Zbigniew Brzezinski--even more rooted in hostility to Israel--cannot obliterate the fact that, in the year 2000, the Jewish state proposed a brave alternative to relentless conflict. Yassir Arafat turned it down flat. Last year, in Gaza and at the initiative of Ariel Sharon, Israel embarked on an actual withdrawal that, had it brought some measure relief, would have had its second stage now being pursued in the West Bank. There now govern in what was supposed to be Palestine parties and movements that, in their hearts and heads, in their guts, have no recourse but to war. Annapolis, shmanopolis, Carter can't see it. And it is because he is a bigot himself. He is also a peril to the Democratic Party. And maybe I'll write about this some time.