We might do well to consider the criticism of both Carter and Obama in the context of the personal attacks on Abraham Lincoln while he was in office.

Was Lincoln a Tyrant?
When Abraham Lincoln took office in March 1861, the executive branch was small and relatively limited in its power. By the time of his assassination, he had claimed more prerogatives than any president before him, and the executive branch had grown enormously.
Lincoln’s critics witnessed his expanding power with alarm. They accused him of becoming a tyrant and warned that his assertions of authority under the guise of “commander in chief” threatened the viability of a constitutional democracy.

Lincoln ignored his foes and kept moving. And, despite lingering discomfort with some of his actions – particularly around the issue of civil liberties – history has largely vindicated him. Why?

'Idiot,' 'Yahoo,' 'Original Gorilla': How Lincoln Was Dissed in His Day
By nearly any measure—personal, political, even literary—Abraham Lincoln set a standard of success that few in history can match. But how many of his contemporaries noticed?

Sure, we revere Lincoln today, but in his lifetime the bile poured on him from every quarter makes today’s Internet vitriol seem dainty. His ancestry was routinely impugned, his lack of formal learning ridiculed, his appearance maligned, and his morality assailed.

Northern newspapers openly called for his assassination long before John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan.

Members of Lincoln’s own Republican party reviled him as, in the words of Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, “timid vacillating & inefficient.” A Republican newspaper editor in Wisconsin wrote, “The President and the Cabinet,—as a whole,—are not equal to the occasion.” The Ohio Republican William M. Dickson wrote in 1861 that Lincoln “is universally an admitted failure, has no will, no courage, no executive capacity … and his spirit necessarily infuses itself downwards through all departments.”

Lincoln had won the 1860 election in November with 39.8 percent of the popular vote. This absurdly low total was partly due to the fact that four candidates were on the ballot, but it remains the poorest showing by any winning presidential candidate in American history.

This thread has opened up a tirade of vitriol about stuff we really don't fully understand. Israel (it seems to me) is doing to Gaza what the US did to the American Indians in the 19th century. They have a sophisticated arsenal: planes, tanks, ammo, etc--largely funded by the US --and are using these weapons to continue to destabilize Gaza so that their illegal settlements can continue. Just as the US used repeating carbines and gatling guns agains the indians' bows and arrows. This isn't about the rockets (which have been completely ineffective) it is a land grab, an excuse to bomb the f**k out of Gaza to keep them from mounting a viable government. Israel hasn't been acting like the heroic little country we all admired in 1946. The whole mess was started by England and France after WW1, when they carved up the desert into "countries" in order to acquire access to the oil. And yes, religion is involved: Muslims and Christians have a long history of battling each other--remember the Crusades?--big victories on both sides during all of recorded history. Carter's appeal for peace in the region is admirable, not "weak" as some have alluded.