It's weird really that Carter being former military, didn't kiss the military's ass or make them his friends. Something in the long run he did right.
Reagan and others after him started kissing the military's ass and start saluting them and shit lol.
Funny thing is, a lot of much needed changes happened under Carter. True, he didn't do the whole saluting thing, but he actually instituted changes that took a long time to come about and that Reagan and Bush reaped the visual rewards of.
Carter was the one who really tried to turn the post-Vietnam military into a new fighting force, restore their spirit, and root out the problems that had been identified. As a former Nuke man, he knew that the standards needed to return to the military as it shifted from conscription back to volunteer.
I don't like a lot of things he did, but I'll give credit where credit is due. A big one is that he raised the military's pay nearly every year.
One of the last things the Reagan Admin did was turn AAFES over to civilians.
Overnight a BDU jacket went from $12 to $65. Boots went from $15 to $75.
And the clothing allowance was left unchanged.
By the time I got out, your clothing allowance wouldn't buy you a new uniform. What was worse, is that despite all the 'oh, a uniform will last you 5 years' bullshit that you still see, is that they last 5 years for finance and really really REMFy REFMs, where if you work for a living, they're fucked in like a year or two.
There were a lot of small ways that the military got fucked more and more as time went on.
Clinton removing the dental plan and modifying it heavily in 96 was a big one.
Eh, enough on that.