I was in the army when reagan was president. During the 1984 campaign, some people who were in while carter was president described how things got better under reagans military budget(increase pay, ect)
was in the Navy 1975-1979. We did the best we could, and I believe we were capable enough to perform missions if called on, but...the cuts in military spending were atrocious.
When I was up in the North Atlantic above the Artic Circle on the USS JFK, we did not have enough foul weather jackets to go around. We had to "hotseat" foul weather jackets (supplemented by stuffing cleaning rags inside them to make them warmer) so when someone came down off of the flight deck, they had to surrender their jacket to someone who had to go up.
What a pathetic POS Carter was, and is.