The Carter years were the culmination of the first great decline of the America-the-way-it-used-to-be. For many (including in my parents day) the highwater mark was the Eisenhower Administration, at that point American had never been more powerful. Then with the youthful energetic JFK people thought (as did my parents) that a new era was beginning, that a new generation born out of depression and war and emerged victorious over both was about to usher in a new age of greatness, prosperity and enlightenment...
It was of course all a complete sham. JFK won largely with Daddy's help, the dead voting in Chicago and JFK himself cheating (by taking notes) in the televised debate with Nixon that people listening thought Nixon won hands down but whom the TV age boobs gave JFK the win. This marked the advent of a false prophet, and ideal that could not be met, a flawed leader who had the morals of a feral rabbit and relied upon family for advice over all others, a novice who was ill-prepared to met the Soviet menace and barely he (and we) survived it, and then he was unfairly struck down in the prime of life (another myth) and people began to be jaded about power and those in and around it.
Mid-JFK the Soviets scared the pants of us by launching the first satellite into space before our captured Nazi scientists managed to launch anything. The era of duck-and-cover became more real and the proxy wars hotter. And those latter were micromanged like nothing before and failure was already baked in and became just another item on the buffet of failure. Then that complete fustercluck Johnson, tough-talking commie-killer by day and lunatic socialist welfare state expander extraordinaire by night. Still, the American post-war economy hummed, we were still #1, despite being ruled by idiots and despite increasing societal rot (stinking hippies and proto-FemiNazis and eco-tards) and despite structural weakness in our economy and industry that would be exploited by Asia and other emerging economies.
Nixon brought a new pragmatism that had all Country Club proto-Ruling Class Pubbies giddy with possibilities, and his electoral thrashing of McGovern seemed to cement this power block into place...until Deep Throat and a ravenous press that had begun to swing wildly left got wind of a minor office break-in and that toppled a President for the first time in history based solely on his own character flaws.
The oil crisis, inflation, a nothing leader like Ford, malaise had fertile ground in 1976, and Carter ran as the not-Nixon/not-Ford candidate and America got a middle manager as POTUS who was a neophyte on foreign policy (and it showed, nothing higher than the abysmal Iranian Hostage affair and the disastrous rescue op) and a neophyte on economic issues (and it showed by a worsening economy, stagflation, unemployment, industry absolutely hammered by foreign competition who had no high labor union wages or burdensome government regulations or taxation) and malaise took on new meaning and Carter's face was the poster boy for it. I was in the Navy at this time, morale was in the sh*tter, nobody felt optimistic about anything. The Left did a great job advancing this, people being leveled into the same unhappy state should have been their Nirvana moment, but Carter was the Wong guy to exploit it.
As a result Reagan swept in with simple clarity - government is the problem, government is too big, government takes and consumes too much, people need to be allowed to unleash their potential free of interference, etc. He was the Anti-Carter, the Anti-Uncle Handout, and he kicked electoral ass, twice. Nobody has approached his election numbers since.
And the Democrats became harder left, harder socialists and the Pubbies returned to Ruling Class hands and its been back down the drain ever since.
Carter redefined malaise...now Obama is redefining the drain and breeds hatred and apathy like nothing ever before seen.