In the 1980 presidential election the American people did the best they could with President Carter, given the limitations imposed on them by our Constitution. They retired him from office — 44 states participated in the ceremony.

Looking back, however, on how he has abused his retirement, I, for one, wish we could have done better. Perhaps he could have been put in a jar. He has, in the succeeding 28 years since his exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, remained almost as ruinous a nuisance out of office as he was in office. This cannot be said of any other president.

When Mr. Carter was given the heave ho, the Misery Index, an index combining rates of inflation and unemployment, was at an all time high of 21.98% — up from 13.5% when he was elected in 1976. After his last full year as president inflation was at 13.5% and unemployment at 7.2%.

Today the Misery Index is at 8.83%, though the Democrats have not a nice thing to say about Mr. Carter’s Republican successors. In Mr. Carter’s day the prime rate moved to 20% from 7%, and the home mortgage rate was almost 18%. Think about those figures this autumn when you are asked to choose between Senator McCain and either Senators Obama or Clinton, two Democrats with even less experience than Governor Carter in matters economic.

As for foreign policy, Mr. Carter presided over a steady decline in American influence, as the Soviets went on a worldwide offensive while the American military atrophied. American diplomats were jailed in their own embassy in Teheran and the military rescue mission mounted by Mr. Carter to free them was one of the few American military embarrassments of the 20th century. Incidentally, Iran’s present president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, played a major role in holding our diplomats, according to retired FBI agents who monitored Mr. Ahmadinejad’s communications from Teheran to fellow conspirators then in New York.

Yet Jimmy remains quite full of himself. In fact, his sense of moral superiority has grown as the memory of his failed presidency recedes into history. Rather than retire to a library to read, as President Truman did, in the hope that he might understand what went wrong during the Carter administration, Mr. Carter founded the Carter Center for Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, and Building Hope. Perhaps it is his intention to spread the failure of his presidency throughout the world. Think of it, a worldwide Misery Index of 21.98%.

There was a time when former presidents were reluctant to criticize their successors and refused to do so while on foreign soil. Mr. Carter broke from that discipline years ago. He attacked the Reagan administration from Cairo in 1984 where he scoffed at the president for being “more inclined to form a Contra army to overthrow the Sandinistas or inject the Marines into Lebanon or use American battleships to shell villages around Beirut” than to negotiate.

In the run up to Gulf I, he interposed himself, warning that if the Bush administration attacked Iraq, America “would reap great and very serious deleterious consequences politically.” To the consternation of Clinton administration officials in 1994, Mr. Carter popped up in North Korea to work out a nuclear agreement with President Kim Il Sung that proved utterly futile. The North Koreans detonated a nuclear device 12 years later.

Now against the wishes of the Bush administration Mr. Carter is in the Middle East, holding meetings with Hamas and laying a wreath on the grave of the deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Hamas regularly lobs rockets and mortars into Israeli neighborhoods and is dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

Arafat was a famously corrupt leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front and over a lifetime responsible for the deaths of Americans and Israelis alike as well as hundreds of other innocent people. Of course, the Bush administration’s opposition to Mr. Carter’s arrogant journey only encourages this impudent man.

The Israelis are for the most part ignoring his visit after making it abundantly clear that they do not favor it. They are right to snub him. That he has been greeted by Hamas speaks volumes about the public life of Jimmy Carter. A failure as a president, Mr. Carter is appraised as a useful tool by our enemies.