Looking back on history and on Jimmah Carter, I wonder now if he feigned stupid to help him carry out his part of what seems to be a continuous attack on western civilization.
I mean, even then, they had the news media in their pocket. And we all didn’t have the internet to exchange observations like we do now. There was no FR, there was no Rush Limbaugh even, thanks to the so-called “fairness doctrine”, which the great Ronaldus Maximus Reagan’s FCC finally repealed.
Some of Jimmah’s dumbness could be laid to a head fake on Western Civ. but not mothballing the USS Nimitz. It was our first “class” nuke carrier and the keel had been laid. It cost 500 million$ to buy out the contracts and store the pre-built stuff, reactors, etc. And he is/was a nuke/qualified Naval officer. The notion that he had some super smart long term view was nonsense on its face. He set our carrier program back a decade and it fell to Reagan to get it re-started.
And, as you noted, no one in the fakemedia ever asked him what the bleep he was doing. We eventually saw that his actual skill set was limited to framing houses. We sure as bleep didn’t get much return on our Naval Academy money.