Most people I’ve spoken to about Jimmy Carter who were alive at the time seem to say the same as you. I’ve heard that living in America at the time was depressing and embarrassing. I have a feeling a lot of the praise for the man is from people who weren’t even around when he was president but have been fed some story about how he was great. I see a lot of praise for him online yet it’s very hard to find from the lips of American who lived through it.
I was a kid when Carter was president. In the late 70s, the US was undergoing a series of shocks. An oil crisis where many gas stations ran out of gas. High inflation and high unemployment. People were literally talking about the biblical end times. They saw Israel fighting for its life. They saw the Iran-Iraq war (the US supported Saddam Hussein as payback against the new Iran government).
Carter was a good man. But he seemed to have no answers for a people who were desperate for leadership like FDR’s during the Great Depression.
Probably because he was the most humanitarian president post-campaign. His accomplishments done after presidency could be its own Wikipedia entry.
That gives me the impression that the 70's was simply a bad time with a good man in charge, when in those times people more or less want to be told "it's okay I'll fix it" with no plan in sight.
we're living through THAT in real time, so I guess history rhymes.
