The Great Man Returns, by J.B. Shurk

It seemed fitting that President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral took place only days before President Trump’s second inauguration.  Carter has often been described as one of the nation’s worst executives — a pejorative epithet now firmly attached to President Biden’s name as well.  So it was painfully symbolic for the lost and confused outgoing president to eulogize his often-disparaged predecessor.  One could be forgiven for wondering whether, at the end of his remarks, Old Joe might try to scooch Jimmy’s body to one side and join him in the casket.  Both literally and figuratively, we buried two terrible presidents this January.

Of course, all of America’s living ex-presidents attended Carter’s funeral.  Sitting in the same pew at Washington’s National Cathedral, they appeared a perfect rogues’ gallery of corruption and failure.  Bill Clinton still looks like the “after” picture for a high school class on the consequences of contracting venereal disease.  George W. Bush has aged like a man whose conscience torments his waking hours.  Barack Obama resembles a worn photograph of a forgotten celebrity from a bygone era. …

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