A couple of thoughts:
1) How ironic - and predictable - is it that not long after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, one of Jimmy Carter's signature accomplishments - the 1994 accord with North Korea - has been publicly revealed as a fraud? Geitner Simmons has more in a wide-ranging post.
2) Andrew Sullivan is right. I'm not sure that the Clinton administration had a better option, but the effect is the same; a foreign policy turns out to have been a short-term palliative at best, with the Bush administration left to clean up the mess.