When I see that Mr. Ted Hinnenkamp has asserted that President Bush is the worst president ever, all I can think of is: Where was he during the Jimmy Carter administration? 

When Carter ran for president in 1976, he was running against a poor economy, brought about by 20 years of liberal policy, and presented the “misery index” — the sum of inflation and unemployment to the electorate. After four years of the stewardship of Carter and his liberal allies in Congress, the economy got much worse. By the time he left office, interest rates were 21 percent, inflation was 13.5 percent, unemployment was 7 percent, and the misery index was 20.5 percent. 

 Carter’s administration was the administration of “malaise” and “stagflation” (i.e. a combination of economic stagnation plus inflation). He tried every liberal nostrum — windfall profits tax on oil companies, increased taxes and more spending on “public works projects” (i.e. pork) — to get the economy moving and still things got worse. These failed liberal “ideas” are being resurrected by liberals today as “new” ideas and represent their idea of “hope and change.”

Carter said, “I think it’s inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated.” For the first time in American history, we were told that our children would have a lower standard of living than their parents.

By what metric could Mr. Hinnenkamp assert that Bush is the worst president when Jimmy Carter stands like a colossus of presidential ineptitude, incompetence and ineffectiveness?

George Lundstrom

Albert Lea