Carter: Today's Middle Class Looks Like Poor From His Presidency Due to Income Gap

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27. The biggest opposition to Carter came from the oil companies and TV networks during the Iran crisis

The combination of the withholding from the retail market of refined product (the so-called Iran Oil Crisis of 1979-80, which was largely a sham)(1) and the nightly pummeling for what became The 444 Days was what actually did him in.

That, and his unwillingness to fire his Energy Secretary, James Schlessinger, who refused to invoke existing emergency powers to force the Seven Sisters to reopen refineries that had been shut down and deliver crude that was sitting at anchor offshore. That, and his refusal to confront Reagan, Bush and Casey about the dirty tricks that became known as the October Surprise. http://consortiumnews.com/2011/05/12/jimmy-carters-october-surprise-doubts/
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(1)Which was largely contrived, but immensely effective in pushing up oil industry profits and in creating a public sense of crisis going into the 1980 elections. See,

The Nation, 04/21/1979 - The Phony Oil Crisis by Deutsch, Peter
If the oil shortage is "real" it is because oil companies are building up ... The Phony Oil Crisis PETER DEUTSCH Faced with the onslaught of crisis ...

The Nation, 08/02/1980 - Editorials
It blamed everything on the cutoff of Iranian oil-the much-ballyhooed ... Iran's shortfall in exports has not produced any real shortage of crude in the ...

http://www.nationarchive.com/Summaries/v231i0004_04.htm