George Will writes about how Jimmy Carter has accused him for years of helping Ronald Reagan win the great debate by giving him Jimmy's briefing book:

A quarter of a century has passed since 44 states said "No, thanks" to Jimmy Carter's offer to serve a second term, yet he still evidently thinks his loss is explained not by foreign policy debacles, such as invading Iran with eight helicopters, and a misery index — inflation plus unemployment — of 22, almost triple today's index.

Rather, he seems to think approximately this:
Ronald Reagan won because he won the only debate. He won it not because of Carter's debate performance ("I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry . . ."), but only because Reagan had Carter's briefing book. And Reagan had it because this columnist gave it to him.

That last accusation, for which there is no evidence, is, as he has been told, false. But he is a recidivist fibber. Last Oct. 21, on National Public Radio, he said: "We found out later that one of Ronald Reagan's supporters inside the White House had stolen my briefing book, my top-secret briefing book that prepared me for the debate. And a very prominent news reporter was the one who took the briefing book to Ronald Reagan and helped drill him on the things that I might say if he said certain things." Asked who that reporter was, Carter replied, "It was George Will, and it was later known that he did that."

The role of ex-President requires a grace and restraint notably absent from Carter. See, for example, his criticism of America when he is abroad, as in England two weeks ago. Having made such disappointing history as President, Carter as ex-President should at least refrain from disseminating a historical falsehood.

So strong, however, is the human impulse to believe comforting myths, Carter probably will continue to promulgate the fiction that I gave Reagan the utterly unimportant briefing book, thereby catalyzing the 1980 landslide. But to be fair: As a candidate, Carter promised only that as President he would never tell a lie, thereby leaving himself a loophole for his post-Presidential career as a fabulist.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp