"He will surround himself with the best and brightest!"

Well, that was the stock line, anyway, when citizens of good intent questioned the experience and gravity of Barack Obama.

So who's he consulting with on the Middle East? Why, only the man who has made a worse mess of things than anyone before, or anyone since. The man whose mistakes we are still paying for, in American blood.

Yup. Barack Obama is getting advice on Syria, Iran and Israel, from...Jimmy Carter:

Last December, Carter visited Syria, and met not only with President Assad but with Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader.A senior White House official confirmed that the Obama transition team had been informed in advance of Carter’s trip to Syria, and that Carter met with Obama shortly before the Inauguration.

The two men—Obama was accompanied only by David Axelrod, the President’s senior adviser, who helped arrange the meeting; and Carter by his wife, Rosalynn—discussed the Middle East for an hour.

Carter declined to discuss his meeting with Obama, but he did write in an e-mail that he hoped the new President “would pursue a wide-ranging dialogue as soon as possible with the Assad government.”

Great. As Glenn Reynolds is apt to say, the country's in the very best of hands...