It is exactly like today. What Carter did, just like what Biden has done more recently , was drowned out by hate fueled character assassination. Yes Carter was a genuine nice human being wanting the best for everyone but at the same time Reagan was genuinely likable, believable. He was “the great communicator”. So like today, only a much nicer person getting his character assassinated but by somberly influential rather than todays centrism, racism, hatred and spite.

Carter also told people things they didn’t want to hear but had to. He was the genuine “telling it like it is”.

I was alive at the time e and thought Carter was a great president. I may have been biased by even then preferring engineers. However I also got swept up in the wave of Reaganism along with everyone else. Yes, I believed cities were hellish gang ridden dystopias, the countryside filled with “welfare queens” collecting generational wealth by pumping out babies, and college elite using abortion at will as just casual contraception. I still believe Reagan hastened the fall of the Soviet Union by outspending them in an arms race. I was surely naive at the time but also Reagan was that good to make you believe anything