(FORTUNE Magazine) – The present writer has long tended to twitch uncontrollably any time somebody speaks warmly of Jimmy Carter, so he has been more spastic than usual lately. Esteemwise -- there is no denying it -- Jimmy is making a comeback. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll says only 29% of Americans now think negatively about Carter (vs. 36% who are down on Reagan). The Washington Post has run an interminable eulogium about the ''moral imperative'' that causes ''Citizen Carter'' to traipse around the world doggedly doing good. Columnist Mary McGrory rhapsodized that ''he really is a Christian . . . he truly believes he is his brother's keeper.'' Our own view is somewhat grouchier. We see Carter as behaving in retirement much as he did in the Oval Office, where he spent half his time trying to persuade you of his quintessential goodness and the other half making terrible policy decisions. Both tendencies have been on display in his postpresidential career in Central America, where certain events have been critical to his comeback. In Panama he gets credit for proclaiming Noriega's election fraudulent; in Nicaragua he gets credit for helping establish the legitimacy of the Sandinistas' electoral defeat. Except for a few hard-nosed conservatives, nobody is making the alternative case: that his policy instincts in both countries were woolly minded, as usual, and if they had been implemented, the bad guys would still be on top. It is true that Carter assailed Noriega for stealing the Panamanian election last fall, also true that Jimmy's position carried special weight in the country because as President he had promoted the Panama Canal treaty. Okay, we give him that. But what was the U.S. supposed to do about the stolen election? On Carter's analysis, the answer was ''diplomacy,'' i.e., doing nothing. He opposed sanctions. He kept saying things like ''Panama does not belong to the United States.'' He warned about the tensions that would result from beefing up U.S. forces in Panama. He used his moral authority to make it harder for the U.S. to invade Panama and arrest Noriega (and opposed the invasion when it came). In judging Carter's role in Nicaragua, we start by focusing on two facts: (1) The electoral process was wildly unfair to the opposition, whose meetings were repeatedly broken up by Sandinista tough guys, whose access to television was severely limited, and which should have won much bigger than it ultimately did; and (2) the Sandinistas were expected to win. Against this background, the role Jimmy carved out for himself during the campaign -- when he was telling everybody in sight that the process was basically fair -- takes on a less benign aspect. His self-assigned role was to legitimize the Sandinista victory he expected. This posture was consistent with his behavior all during the mid-Eighties, when he repeatedly called for withdrawing support from the contras, abandoning the economic embargo against Nicaragua, and ''negotiating'' our differences with the Sandinistas -- even though there was then no prospect of a remotely free election. Carter seems always to have assumed that the thugs in question were popular and deserved power. And now he gains a certain amount of credit for helping get rid of them. Intriguing, eh? But hard on the nervous system.