Funny how you skipped right over the Carter administration...
Carter damn near destroyed us. Double-digit inflation... A laughing-stock overseas... Double digit interest rates... Double digit unemployment.
Carter had it all. Most people today have no idea how Reagan saved them from Carter's mess.
I once made an observation that generally speaking an administration inherits the ripples created over the previous five to ten years. Carter inherited what Nixon/Ford left him, just like Clinton inherited what Reagan/Bush left him and Obama inherited what Bush/Bush left him. And there are plenty of men who get in the chair and just keep the country from going on auto pilot, they don't DO anything.
I really think the current mess started when Kennedy was killed, period. We never should have gone to Vietnam. Then Nixon created a situation where people started needing health insurance (before his ass, you could AFFORD to pay for medical care out of pocket, c'mon Plunk, you're not that much younger than me). He was a lying, thieving son of a bitch. So look at the shit his administration set in place that
IS STILL IN PLACE and realize those were things done by a man of low to no moral character.
Both Ford and Carter were nons, lets be honest, and if I was much smarter I'd probably be able to point to things that Nixon set into place that created ripples that Carter was hit with.
Reagan was a demented old fart who just knew how to read the lines written for him by the rich bastards who were pulling his strings, same for his cronies Bush I and Bush II except the Bush's made things interesting by overtly chipping away at our personal rights under the guise of "Patriotism" and "National Security" (no surprise there since Bush I was in the CIA for HOW many years? He's wired to believe nobody can be trusted).
I've also said this country long ago has gotten too big for a single individual to run or to choose who should be running things, for a very long time. When the decision was made for ONE president, two four year terms max, the entire population of the
country was about the size of the current population of Chicago. We need something else. One man who puts HIS men in the real seats of power (i.e., the cabinet -- honestly, the senate and house are horseshit, they're so g'damned owned by their lobbiests and corporate sponsors it's pathetic) is too much power (also, too much shit to think about).