His four years in office were fraught, bedeviled from the start by double-digit inflation and a post-Vietnam-and-Watergate bad mood. His fractious staff was dominated by the inexperienced 'Georgia Mafia' from his home state. His micromanagement of the White House tennis court drew widespread derision, and his toothy, smiling campaign promise that he would 'never lie' to the country somehow curdled into disappointment and defeat after one rocky term. Yet James Earl Carter Jr., who died today at his home in Plains, Georgia, surely has a fair claim to being the most effective former president his country ever had. In part that's because his post-presidency was the lengthiest on record'more than four decades'and his life span of 100 richly crowded years was the longest of any president, period. But it's also because the strain of basic decency and integrity that helped get Carter elected in the first place, in 1976, never deserted him, even as his country devolved into ever greater...
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