After reading this delusional revisionist history, I decided to respond with a more accurate account of the story. Here was my comment:
Gosh, that really IS a fairy tale.
See, once upon a time, there was a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who barely won election against his rival (who lost because he pardoned the former king). No one knew much of anything about Jimmah, but they voted for him because he was NOT Ford.
Alas, they soon began regretting the error. Jimmah saw gas lines not as a bad thing, but as an opportunity to turn off the hot water in federal facility and wear silly sweaters. While his subjects worried about rampant inflation, soaring interest rates, and rising unemployment, Jimmah told them that they were in a "malaise" and that they just needed to be tough.
But tough Jimmah wasn't. He encouraged evil wizards in a friendly country to revolt against their king, who fled and eventually ended up in Jimmah's kingdom. Jimmah continued to smile his big toothy grin at the evil wizards who promptly kidnapped 52 of King Jimmah's subjects. Poor Jimmah. This was a crisis he couldn't solve by lecturing the populace or putting on a cardigan. He dithered and frowned but just couldn't figure out how to get those wizards to free his subjects.
As the new election grew close, King Jimmah knew the whole hostage thing was dragging down his popularity (well, that and the whole stagflation thing). So, he decided to finally send some knights to rescue the hostages. But alas! King Jimmah had spent his subjects' money trying to turn lead into gold (or solar panels into oil), and now his knights had no armor and their swords were rusty. When the news came back that the knights' flying carpets had come unravelled and all the knights had been killed and their bodies dragged back to the evil wizards' palace to humiliate Jimmah and his subjects, King Jimmah's subjects had finally had enough of the hapless king. They threw the bum out and hailed his successor as a great king--a title that king wore even after death.
The new king, King Ronald, changed Jimmah's policies. He recognized that oil did, in fact, run the productivity of America, and telling the subjects to shut up and wear sweaters was a dumb idea. He cut the taxes on all the subjects and made ALL of them very happy. He increased economic growth by dismantling silly, stupid Jimmah rules that had been designed to harm the merchants and label the successful subjects as greedy.
Now, many moons later, we have a new Jimmah promising, yet again, that the subjects need to put on sweaters, shut their yaps, and just be grateful that the pretender is telling them he won't raise their taxes (which, of course he will, since his own wizards haven't been able to turn lead to gold yet). Just as with King Jimmah, many of the subjects don't care how little they know about the prince, or whether his schemes will work. They are mad at the current king and forget that King Jimmah wasn't interested in their prosperity; he was interested in their sacrifice. The new prince was the same way, and even though his own, hand-picked vice prince, in a moment of clarity, warned the people that electing the pretender would lead to more problems and that they would not agree with the pretender's decisions, there were still subjects willing to make up fairy tales to explain their delusions.
I kinda like it.
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