I posted this over at the LF blog, but I thought Corner readers might like to know that Jimmy Carter wishes Jesus had made a deal with the devil. No, really.

From the American Spectator:

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, to [Jimmy] Carter’s mind, the biggest trade-off of the Crucifixion may have been gaining eternal salvation while losing a potentially great bureaucratic overlord. During a meditation on the temptation of Christ, Carter muses over the attractiveness of Satan’s offer to allow Christ to rule the world if he rejected God:
What a wonderful and benevolent government Jesus could have set up. How exemplary justice would have been. Maybe there would have been Habitat projects all over Israel for anyone who needed a home. And the proud, the rich, and the powerful could not have dominated their fellow citizens[….]As a twentieth-century governor and president I would have had a perfect pattern to follow. I could have pointed to the Bible and told other government leaders, “This is what Jesus did 2000 years ago in government. Why don’t we do the same?”

Note: I inserted the ellipses after “citizens” because I couldn’t figure out what was going on with the weird character in the original text.

Update: Captain Ed says Macomber quoted Jimmy out of context.