I'm sure the next 30 years will treat Jimmy Carter much better than the last 30 years. In particular, on the topic of energy, Jimmy knew what was coming long before most people did. If we'd spent the past 30 years using cheap oil to build non-auto transportation infrastructure and renewable energy generation infrastructure, then the next 30 years would be a lot more pleasant than they're going to turn out.

As far as wrecking the economy, that was mostly the Fed's fault--and Jimmy was the one who fixed that, getting the Fed chairman to resign and appointing Paul Volker. The corrective actions didn't really take hold until Jimmy was out of office, though.

Finally, as you say, a full-blown zero-based budgeting effort would probably be more trouble than it's worth for most households. But I think there's a lot of value in the concept of setting all the budget categories to zero from time to time, rather than just accepting that next year's spending is destine to look a lot like the last.