Carter's Crisis of Confidence Speech 30 years later

Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Jonah 1:17

I sometimes think about the biblical story of Jonah. I believe that a couple of decades ago, I was called to change the course of my life. Whether it was the march of events or an act of God is depends upon your point of view. I believe I was called by God to change, and this was an instance where I heard the call and answered it.

So when I see someone who his called, I think of the old testament prophet Jonah. God commanded Jonah to rail against sin in the ancient city of Nineveh. Fearing for his life, Jonah fled and tried to escape by going overseas. God sent a storm, the sailors threw Jonah overboard and Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. After three days in the belly of the fish, Jonah was vomitted up on shore and finally obeyed God's original command to preach to the sinful of Nineveh.

Over the years, I have been called to make other changes in my life, sometimes I have and sometimes I haven't. When I have refused to answer the call, the consequences have been hard to bear. What is really vexing, ignoring the call to change my life usually means that the situation reappears and is worse because the problems I have needed to change have become progressively worse. For example, refuse to pay your credit debt one month, the next month another bill arrives with added penalties and interests. Ignore a pain in your leg and the next thing you know you spending a week in the hospital. Ignoring warning signs is not just an individual failing, it is a failing of nations and cultures as well.

American is a country that has been ignoring the warning signs of imminent national catastrophe. July 15, is a good day to reflect on it. Why July 15th? Because July 15, 2009 was the 30th anniversary of President Jimmy Carter's famous "Malaise Speech." There was an excellent editorial about the making of the speech by Gordon Stewart's New York Times. Stewart was one of Carter's speech writers and was involved the process of creating Carter's Speech. Carter's Speech Therapy, gives an inside look at history of how the speech was created. Today it known as the Malaise Speech, and it was derided by many American Conservatives, including Ronald Reagan.

I was first led to reconsider Carter's speech when I was listening to Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyer's journal. Bacevich was interviewed by Moyers on Sept. 26, 2008, just five weeks before the 2008 election. Bacevich considered Carter's speech astute and prophetic,

Well, this is the so-called Malaise Speech, even though he never used the word "malaise" in the text to the address. It's a very powerful speech, I think, because President Carter says in that speech, oil, our dependence on oil, poses a looming threat to the country. If we act now, we may be able to fix this problem. If we don't act now, we're headed down a path in which not only will we become increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, but we will have opted for a false model of freedom. A freedom of materialism, a freedom of self-indulgence, a freedom of collective recklessness. And what the President was saying at the time was, we need to think about what we mean by freedom. We need to choose a definition of freedom which is anchored in truth, and the way to manifest that choice, is by addressing our energy problem.

He had a profound understanding of the dilemma facing the country in the post Vietnam period. And of course, he was completely hooted, derided, disregarded.

The actual title of the Malaise Speech was Crisis of Confidence. In that speech President Carter addressed the American people and urged the neation to wean itself from its dependence on foreign oil. In his speech Carter said,



Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our Nation's life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our Government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.


What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends. Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do?



First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.


What was amazing was that Carter's call for sacrifice and change well-received by the American people, but then political blunders by Carter and criticism of the speech by his political opponents, quickly drained support for this change. Carter's speech was soon being derided as the "Malaise Speech."

Carter speech writer Gordon Stewart was surprised by the American people's change in attitude.

To this day, I don’t entirely know why the speech came to be derided for a word that was in the air, but never once appeared in the text. Still, the “malaise” label stuck: maybe because President Carter’s cabinet shake-up a few days later wasted the political energy that had been focused on our energy problems; maybe because the administration’s opponents attached it to the speech relentlessly; maybe because it was just too hard to compete with Ronald Reagan and his banner of limitless American consumption.



The real reason is probably that there was never any way the Jimmy Carter we all know would avoid saying: “There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.” Where the speeches of Reagan and Barack Obama evoke the beauty of dreams, President Carter insisted on the realities of responsibility and the need for radical change. Mr. Carter’s sense of our own accountability, his warnings about the debilitating effects of self-centered divisiveness were the speech’s true heresies. They are also the very elements that keep it relevant today.


One of the people who derided Carter's speech was Ronald Reagan, whose optimism appealed to a vast majority of American voters in 1980. Reagan's defeat of Carter, would have consequences that affect us to this day. According to Kevin Mattison's article A Politics of National Sacrifice, which appeared in the April 8, 2009 American Prospect, even liberarians and conservatives should begin to pay heed to Carter's 1979 speech.


Looking back now, the malaise speech indicates a turning point in our history, one that helps define Barack Obama's recent victory. The age of conservatism -- from Reagan's 1980 election up through the end of George W. Bush's second term -- has been framed not by Carter's tones of humility but by celebratory nationalism. In fact, the conservative game plan was laid by Ronald Reagan's direct retort to the malaise speech, made when announcing his candidacy against Carter. Reagan explained, "I find no national malaise." Instead, America stood as a "shining city on a hill," a term he used persistently throughout the campaign.



From that moment, sacrifice and civic obligation faded from presidential rhetoric. You never heard Carter's language from either of the Bushes -- not even in the wake of September 11, when W. instead told Americans to go shopping. Or consider 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who suggested all was well in "real America" -- it was only Washington that had problems. Such was the end-game of right-wing populism: government bad, people good.


As Mattison points out Obama election in Nov. of 2008 is a reaction to the 30 years of right wing populism. While many would like to cling to the ideas expoused by President Reagan, the idea that the rugged individualism and free markets can solve our current national problems have been proved false. They might been acceptable in 1980, but thirty years later Reagan's ideology appears impotent and sometimes corrupt. A different perspective and a different ideology needed and it was articulated by the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.


On January 19, 2009 Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. While his political campaign was full of beautiful rhetoric about America's need for change and the power of the American people to affect that change. His inaugural address was sterner, a description of the crisis facing us all and also a call to action. It is very similar to Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech.


That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many -- and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

Three decades have passed since Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech. We have come full circle and are back to roughly where we were in 1979. Granted we aren't spending hours waiting in lines at service stations for gasoline, but we are staying up late worrying about whether we can pay our mortgage, our doctor's bills, credit card bills and still have money left to buy food.

The tough question is back before us again. Are we going to answer the call, first issued by Jimmy Carter in July of 1979 and later by Barrack Obama in January of 2009? Will we answer the call and sacrifice and work for radical economic, social and political change. Will we work to build a better future? or will we be like Jonah and try to flee from the challenge that the march of events (or God) have placed before us.

I am hoping that the health care crisis, global warming, the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan that have hammered this nation in the past few years, will inspire Americans to work together to change the country's direction. If we work together perhaps we can solve many of the terrible problems that face our nation. But if we stay divided and do nothing these crises may overwhelm the Republic.

If we try, we may find that our solving our problems can unite us and allow us to achieve great things. I for one am willing. Let's get together, figure out what needs to be done, roll up our sleeves and get to work. We don't have any more time to waste--Do We?

Capitano Tedeschi

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