Jimmy Strikes Back

I have family visiting and was out of town for a couple of days, so my blogging time is very limited for the moment. But I can't let Jimmy Carter's letter to the editor in today's WSJ pass by without comment. Brother Jimmy is responding to the devastating column by Mary Anastasia O'Grady last week, which I commented on here.

Jimmy's letter amounts to little more than a vague, finger-wagging lecture. He supplies no details and rebuts none of Ms. O'Grady's charges. The man whose Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, resigned rather than approve of military action to free Americans held by Iranian thugs has no recourse beyond a bland recitation of events. If this is how he teaches Sunday school down in Plains, his pupils' most prayerful moments must occur as they stifle their urge to scream (or sleep) as he drones on about good Christian generalities.

But piety is never an adequate substitute for knowledge; far less can sanctimoniousness stand in for virtue. Carter admits that the military had control of the voting machines after the polls closed, but his defense of this brazen act -- that it's always this way down there -- neither dispels suspicions of fraud nor takes into account the often violent, revolution-plagued atmosphere in contemporary Venezuela. Nor does he broach the fact that Chavez's thugs opened fire on unarmed protestors -- something my friend Thor Halvorssen wrote about last week in the WSJ and on which I commented here and here.

Today's Miami Herald runs a column by Carlos Alberto Montaner that again pins the blame on corrupt computer programmers. As Ms. O'Grady argued, it isn't difficult for voting machines to be set to cap the number of anti-Chavez votes:

"There is also a reasonable accusation that the number of 'yes' votes at some polling stations was 'capped' by software tampering. The charge is supported by the discovery, in some locations, of two or three machines recording the exact same number of 'yes' votes and substantially more 'no' votes. The opposition is claiming that it has proof that this occurred at 500 polling stations. Again, if Mr. Carter and the OAS observers had demanded an open auditing process instead of blindly endorsing government claims, cheating would have been uncovered. But Chávez refused open audits and the observers went along with him."

Carlos Alberto Montaner thinks there is a possible solution that takes into account the inability of the Carter Center to back up its claims:

"What to do? In my opinion, the most sensible thing would have been not to make a pronouncement, but rather create an international tribunal of experts to analyze and verify the electoral results. After all, neither the representatives of the Carter Center sent to Venezuela nor the OAS observers have the technical capability to analyze criminal manipulations of computer software."

He concludes: "I began this article conceding that I had erred by believing the electoral predictions in Venezuela. How did I err? I erred by believing that, faced with a huge defeat, Chávez would have to submit to the will of the people. Chávez was not counting on the people for his victory. A handful of crooked computer programmers would suffice. I should have realized this sooner. My regrets."

That puts Mr. Montaner ahead of Carter, who never met a dictator he didn't trust.