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I would agree that President Carter didn't live up to the expectation we all had when he came in 1976. My husband and I were young idealists who worked on his campaign.

The truth is that for a Democrat to triumph in a presidential election, it needs to come on the heels of 'the dark times' of an unpopular Republican administration. Carter followed the Nixon era, Clinton succeeded after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, and Obama was a direct result of eight years of Bush/Cheney.

The first term of the Clinton administration was very jolly. Everybody was running around meeting people and of course, in the second term, everyone went down the black hole, which also happened at the end of the Reagan administration.

We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress, which played a big part in his administration's problems.

In his 4 years in the White House, President Carter worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.

To this day, I can't understand why the closest man to Jimmy Carter, the key staff guy at the White House, didn't even join us at the White House breakfast meetings where we discussed upcoming legislation with the president. This was unprecedented. People used to say that Jordan was the most brilliant guy around, but you couldn't prove it by me.

I didn't work for Jimmy Carter all those years to go to cocktail parties. I was there as a political adviser, a short-order cook, to work on topical matters.

Jimmy Carter was - he still - he remains to this day America's most ex of ex-presidents. You just can't believe that we elected this doofus. He was a bright enough guy and sort of well-meaning. But he was about as prepared to be president of the United States as your goofy old uncle, you know, the one that memorises baseball statistics.

Carter's done a lot more good since he's been out of the White House than when he was in it.