Ex-presidents different, even in how they err

Jimmy Carter was the Nonprofit Ex-President who built homes for humanity and tried to mediate peace and eradicate diseases around the world through his Carter Center in Atlanta.

Bill Clinton was the For-Profit Ex-President, raking in millions in speaking fees and book royalties as he capitalized on his charm and his notoriety.

And yet in recent months, both have stumbled in highly visible ways that seem less an aberration than an extension of their strengths and weaknesses.

They are a reminder that mistakes come with the territory of the high-stakes world of the American presidency.

Carter ignited a firestorm of anger last month when he spent hours closeted with leaders of the Middle East terrorist group Hamas even as the group's gunmen were shelling Israeli citizens, including children.

Albeit well-intentioned, Carter's peace trip was singularly ill-timed, coming at a highly sensitive moment when last-ditch Palestinian-Israeli peace talks could stumble over Hamas' refusal to go along with any compromises with Israel.

Carter's trip had the unfortunate result of giving Hamas visibility and credibility.

That's why State Department officials tried to talk Carter out of the Hamas side trip -- albeit in so polite a fashion that Carter claims not to have understood them.

As president, he got mired in the minutia, even reportedly weighing in sometimes on who could use the White House tennis courts. That isolated him as much as did his nerdy ways and oddly reticent character.

Yet as president, he was responsible for arguably the most significant post-World War II peace breakthrough -- the 1978 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel that set the stage for Arab-Israeli peace.

That's why so many applauded the emergence of the Nonprofit Ex-President.

After his disastrous presidency, Carter went not for personal gain but good works. In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions."

He also found time to write more than 20 books, some with his wife, Rosalynn, including memoirs, political treatises and books on the Middle East, and also children's literature, fiction and spiritual uplift.

Was there some hubris in all of this? Certainly.

Sitting presidents and diplomats sometimes chafed at Carter's criticism or what they saw as his interference. Yet no vitriol poured longer and hotter than after Carter labeled Israel's treatment of Palestinians "apartheid" in a flawed 2006 book and followed that up this year with his diplomatic foray into the terrorist den.

Carter spent about five hours meeting with exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria, even though Meshaal is believed responsible for plotting the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and advocates the destruction of Israel.

On one level, the effort was so naive and ill-timed it raised questions about Carter's judgment.

Meshaal wasn't going to give anything of value to an unofficial envoy. He used Carter's attention for a mini-propaganda bonanza.

Yet on another level, Shalit's father strongly supported Carter's overtures as having the virtue of not being those of Israel. Even President Bush pointedly and appropriately brought the spotlight back to Hamas -- not Carter -- as the major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

As Bush understands, ex-presidents of good intentions deserve respect, even when they make mistakes.

When he was president, Clinton used to wow them in the black churches with his sax playing and Arkansas ease of place both with African-American preaching and Southern Baptist values.

Yet in stumping for his wife, he stumbled badly with his below-the-belt jabs in South Carolina designed to hurt Sen. Barack Obama by subtly emphasizing race -- a tactic he then tried to deny in a series of "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is" moments.

Clinton has admitted that criticism of his wife made him lose his cool on the campaign trail. Yet he can't shake off the verbal parsing that he once used to try to cover up his indecency in the Oval Office with intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Lewinsky scandal was a low moment -- the lowest of his presidency -- when he was caught in a public lie and misconduct that was splattered across the world's front pages. Yet Clinton also was a skilled master of perceptions whose popularity encompassed two terms of strong economic growth and a series of limited overseas interventions.

Many Americans today think back with nostalgia to the good economic times under Clinton when the budget ran a surplus and the White House was crowded with big-brained whiz kids.

And despite serious missteps in Somalia and the Balkans, he scored a hit with the 1998 Good Friday peace accord he helped make happen in Northern Ireland.

And yet, in part because he and Hillary needed to pay off crushing legal bills, Clinton's tenure as ex-president seemed purely one of profit. Clinton's speaking and writing fees zoomed to nearly $14 million in 2001, the year he left office.

Now, as the nation goes through its latest uncomfortable but revelatory exercises on the way to choosing its 44th president, a look at how ex-presidents err is instructive.

One lesson: Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Clinton's venture into Northern Ireland's politics revealed.

Clinton was no saint, yet neither was he a pallid character sleepwalking through his presidency, nor a bulldog charging into a high-stakes war without the shred of an exit strategy. Even in mistakes of leadership, there are gradations.