This post from yesterday noted the failed leadership of the Republican Party as we approach this fall’s elections. In the interests of balance, however, I pass along this delicious post from Victor Davis Hanson in which he takes stock of the current state of the Democratic Party, including one of its standard-bearers, former President Jimmy Carter (earlier post here):

Jimmy Carter . . . almost immediately was back in the news claiming that the United States was one of the worldís great abusers of civil rights (I wonder how our internecine body count in Plains, Georgia stacks up with that in Rwanda, Kosovo, or Dafur?). He adds that all Presidentsóexcept the current oneóhave been supporters of human rights.
In his dotage, Carter is proving once again that he is as malicious and mean-spirited a public figure as he is historically ignorant. And for all his sanctimonious Christian veneer, and fly-fishing, ëaw shucks’ blue-jeans image, he canít hide an essentially ungracious and unkind soul.

Does he have any idea of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson suspending habeas corpus and shutting down newspapers, Woodrow Wilson jailing political dissidents, FDR interning American citizens and executing German agents in secret military tribunals? Do we have currently a Nixonís enemies list? And can Carter point to just one aspect of current American life where civil liberties are materially curtailed, in which an American canít do what he wants? Getting on a plane without shampoo doesnít countóor not having your family at the gate when you land either: all thanks to al Qaeda, not George Bush. [. . .]
There is another disturbing element to Cartesian maliciousness. He asks us to forget all the dilemmas of being President, the necessity of making bad choices when the alternative is usually worse. And, of course, he seems to have amnesia about his own failings that put this country in grave jeopardy. He sanctimoniously lectured us on our Cold War fixation on communismóand got a murderous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He talked of a post-Vietnam reappraisal in the midst of the Cambodian Holocaust. ìHuman Rightsî was an admirable banner, but did not include any such audit of Sandinista Communists.
He wept for the middle class, but adopted policies that led to double-digit interest rates and inflation, ensuring that only the upscale could borrow for a house or ensure their salaries would keep up with the cost of living. No need to mention his energy policy or gas lines.
Carterís Waterloo, of course was the Iranian hostage crisis. It was not just that his gutting of the military helped to explain the rescue disaster. Far more importantly, we can chart the rise of radical political Islam with the storming of the American embassy in Teheran and the impotent response of Jimmy Carter.
Long before George Bush was elected to anything, crowds in Teheran gave us the genesis of the Great Satan and ìDeath to Carterî. Does he remember that so great was the Iranian Islamist hatred of him, that Iran deliberately delayed the brokered release of the hostages until he was out of officeóa lesson that appeasement wins contempt as the additional wage of its failure.

There’s more, so read the whole thing. Then try to figure out the lesser of two bad choices.