Carter’s sin was that he told the American people that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too. He told people the plain truth, and they didn’t want to hear it.

He won election because the American people were disgusted by all of the lies, deceptions, hypocrisy, and criminal behavior that had characterized at least the past decade of American government before Carter- with the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal looming large in the public consciousness.

The problem was that many people who objected to the breaking of eggs still wanted to eat an omelette, and Carter was telling them that omelettes were off the menu. The unchecked consumerism of the 1960s couldn’t be maintained without a host of unpleasant practices that Carter was specifically elected to oppose- which was something that a relatively politically naive public didn’t want to understand. These weren’t the generation which had lived through the depression as teenagers and adults, these were people who’d come of age through the post-WW2 prosperity and never bothered to wonder what ugly things were required to maintain their prosperous lives.

Carter had principles. He was honest with the country- if they weren’t willing to do all the ugly things their predecessors had done to maintain their standard of living (such as maintain American international credibility by going to war on behalf of beleaguered nations like we’d done in Korea and Vietnam), then the country had to live more modestly.

Nobody wants to be told to put on a sweater instead of turning on their heater.