There are not many politicians who are remembered most for what they do after they leave office, rather than what they achieve, or fail to achieve, in it. However, Jimmy Carter is one such example. In the 44 years since he left the White House he not only managed to rehabilitate his reputation, he became the nearest thing there is to a living saint. At least, that is certainly the case if you read some of the tributes made to him by people on the Left of politics.
He’s gone from being seen as a disastrous failure as president, to an example of a great humanitarian. His contemporary, British prime minister James Callaghan, experienced something similar. He was seen as a dreadful prime minister at the time, presiding over a country in deep decline and riven by industrial strife. I know. I was there. Yet Left-wing revisionist historians now portray him as some sort of political hero.
