It is never pleasant to see a man who once occupied the highest office in the land lose stature and credibility after leaving office. It reflects not only on him but also on the Presidency, which isn’t his to sully.  

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., the 39^th President of the United States, was once held in high regard based on his good works with Habitat for Humanity and other worthy causes.

In recent years, however, he has become strident and bitter toward those with whom he disagrees. His pronouncement yesterday that the Tea Party movement is driven primarily by racism was an insult to millions of decent Americans who have taken to the streets for the first time in their lives because of their fear that government is out of control.

When combined with his other controversial views bordering on anti-Semitism, and his breach of protocol in harshly criticizing the previous President, it paints a picture of a small man who feels wronged by life and wants to take it out on his enemies. In doing so, he diminishes his legacy and, by adding his voice as a former President to the chorus of alarmists who see racism in every disagreement with President Obama, he brings discredit upon the office he once held.

Unfortunately for him, he can’t even claim credit for having an original thought on this topic. The liberal press and pundits, Democratic Party operatives and President Obama’s adoring legions, stung by the unprecedented grass-roots response to his “remaking of America” – his words, not mine – have been trying for weeks to find an insult or label that would stick to the Tea Party protesters.

The list reads like graffiti defacing a public wall and has about the same aesthetic appeal; teabaggers, Nazis, brownshirts, angry mob, un-American, right-wing extremists, domestic terrorists, and Astro-Turf.

In fact, it was amateur sociologist Janeane Garofalo who wins the prize for first labeling the Tea Party movement as “racism, straight up” after the April 15^th Tax Day tea party protests, with Keith Olbermann nodding his head in agreement.

Since none of the other insults seemed to discredit or dampen the energy and enthusiasm of the Tea Party protesters, the liberal collective sent out a subspace message to the hive, directing all of them to pull out the race card and put it at the top of the deck. The orchestrated drumbeat is both humorous and sad.

The humor is that we’re supposed to believe the simultaneous appearance of op-eds, public pronouncements and news stories nationwide on racism in the Tea Party movement is somehow spontaneous. The sadness is that their baseless accusations render the charge of racism irrelevant and do harm to people with legitimate claims of racial discrimination.

For the record, if the Tea Party movement was primarily motivated by race, not only would I refrain from participating in it, I would publicly and passionately repudiate it. We Americans who happen to be black and are involved in this movement are conservatives and libertarians, just as the people of all races, colors and creeds with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder.

The Tea Party movement has no leader, nor does it need or want one. Republicans are in their doghouse as much as Democrats, and GOP officials can’t figure out what to do about a movement they cannot control.

Card-carrying iconoclast, dissident feminist and author Camille Paglia understands the genesis of the Tea Party movement. She asks:

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

My only disagreement with her statement is that I don’t think the Democrats have yet realized this is a legitimate movement. If they did, they wouldn’t be demonizing them, because they are energized by every insult hurled at them.

They know the accusations are all lies, and it just makes them more determined, while it makes Democrats and Obama sycophants look shrill and silly.

How could the man from Plains, the one who ran as a populist and declared he wanted "government as good as the American people," miss this? Has the nation become more racist since he declared us to be good in 1976?

Did he not notice that it was the United States, not Germany, not France, not the United Kingdom or any of our supposedly more enlightened allies, which elected a black man to the Presidency?

In leveling charges of racism at millions of good and decent people, Jimmy Carter sold his credibility down the river and reminded us yet again why he was “one and done” as President.