Ex-Presidents' Flying Circus

As Bush 41 jumps from a plane to celebrate his 85th birthday, Jimmy Carter, a few months younger, parachutes into the Middle East with his own foreign policy for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and now Bush 43 is getting into the look-at-me act.

"Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner," the elder Bush said after landing safely in Kennebunkport last week. "Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life."

Such fatherly advice may have inspired George W., who is now out drooling in public about his successor's efforts to fix an economy that fell apart on his watch.

"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," he tells applauding Pennsylvania business people. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."

The acrobatic aspect of W's act is to hammer Obama's policies while bending over backward to maintain a vow not to criticize his successor.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jimmy Carter is plunging full steam ahead in the china shop, bashing Israel and meeting with Hamas leaders (while escaping a reported plot of theirs to kill him), with a reprise of his White House boobery that failed three decades ago to free American hostages in Iran or stop Castro from exporting criminals and mental cases to Florida with the Mariel boatlift.

During the transition earlier this year, Barack Obama kept repeating a mantra of "one president at a time," a prudent approach as well for those whose 15 minutes of fame has expired.

Bush 41's geriatric parachuting may only make his Secret Service detail a little jumpy, but Bush 43 and Carter have the potential to be seriously annoying with their antics in the Ex-Presidents' Flying Circus.