That's all true, but he also shut the door on nuclear energy with his anti-nuclear proliferation policy. I blame him for for not aggressively pursuing a nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle. As a man with a background in nuclear engineering, I'll never understand his reasoning there. As it turned out, the spread of nuclear weapons was not stopped, not only did countries continue developing their own sources of fissionable material, but some of them even showed a willingness to share it.

I do give Carter credit for realizing there was a problem and trying to mobilize the country into doing something about it, but the Iranian hostage crisis paralyzed his presidency. It paralyzed him, absorbed all his attention and energized his critics; and as soon as cheap oil started flowing again, no body cared about expensive solutions to long-term problems.