Brumment -  on President Jimmy Carter’s “worst President ever” gaffe (Bush) or…maybe not.

Carter speaks with typical softness in explaining that he sometimes ties his Sunday school lessons to public issues, such as our country’s unwarranted invasion of Iraq. The religion writer then asks something that strikes me as a tad from left field: “Which president is worse, George W. Bush or Richard Nixon?”

It was more tactful than asking: Who was worse - George W. or you, with your hostages and stagflation?

Carter proceeds to say that George W. is the “worst in history,” not necessarily altogether, but in international relations.

There is unwritten protocol that former presidents don’t criticize each other or the current one, or that they at least deploy understatement and maintain courtesy. It’s not always been observed. The New York Times reminds that Teddy Roosevelt called William Howard Taft a “fathead.”

Still, for a former president to call the current one the worst ever, on anything - it jars you, even if you’d been thinking the same thing.

My assessment was that Carter had spoken without full respect for the power of his words. Perhaps he was lulled by the fact that he was talking to a church reporter for a Little Rock paper. Perhaps he’s simply not as politically savvy as he once was. Or maybe he is, now that you think about it.

I envisioned upon reading the remarks that Carter would end up backtracking on account of a furor and that the Little Rock paper would find it advisable to produce recordings or transcripts to exonerate the reporting.