On July 15, 1979, then president Jimmy Carter went on live television to address the nation. The address he gave that evening — often called the “malaise speech” — is probably one of the best-remembered moments of Carter’s presidency.
The immediate occasion of the speech was ongoing inflation, caused in large part by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) spiking of oil prices. But Carter thought he diagnosed a deeper problem. Americans were not just unhappy with ever-rising gas prices; because of a series of national traumas beginning in the 1960s — the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, the Vietnam War, Watergate, persistent inflation — the American public was suffering from “a crisis of confidence” that was “threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America.”
The address is filled with romantic nostalgia for a simpler time of shared national purpose and optimism. That never really existed, of course. But some of what Carter said rings true:
Our people are losing . . . faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. . . .
. . . too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. . . . There is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and…
Auteur: Nick French
