Presidential tenures do not stand apart from historical context. So, one of the ways we understand our present and future is to consider the past. Thirty years ago this month, President Jimmy Carter gave a speech that may now be seen as a fork in the road not taken. Its calls to action reverberate to today and beyond.
Political historian Kevin Mattson has written a book about the speech, “What The Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?” It is remembered today as the “malaise” speech. Except the speech did not include the word malaise. The speech, in which the president called out the American public for failing to face hard truths, ended up being the springboard for another presidential candidate, one who held up a brighter vision of America, in which the sun was still rising on “a shining city on a hill.”
Mr. Mattson, writing about his book in American Prospect magazine, called the speech the riskiest of Mr. Carter’s presidency, delivered “amid rumors that he had gone crazy.” Mr. Carter had withdrawn to Camp David for a summit with domestic advisers and emerged with the July 15, 1979, speech.
In it, he told Americans that “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” and that “human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.” The president decried how there was a “growing disrespect for government,” and how “fragmentation and self-interest” prevented Americans from tackling the energy crisis, Mr. Mattson wrote.
The speech, Mr. Mattson argues, was “an indictment of America’s civic spirit. Carter used the speech to articulate a realist style of leadership, charged with the warnings about limits and humility. He shared responsibility by confessing his faults. He recognized the wounds left over from Watergate, Vietnam and the assassinations of the 1960s. At one point, though he didn’t have to, he said, ‘This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.’”
Until now, the conventional thinking was that the speech was a blunder. Mr. Mattson notes that Sean Wilentz, author of “The Age of Reagan,” concluded that Mr. Carter “appeared to be abdicating this role as leader and blaming the people for their own afflictions.”
But facts suggest otherwise. Mr. Carter saw an 11 percent approval rating bump after the speech. Mail to the White House was positive. One man, Mr. Mattson writes, told the president in a letter he was the first politician who “said the words that I have been thinking for years.” The man wrote that he had just purchased a moped to commute to work to cut gas consumption.
In the end, though, Mr. Carter directed this tough love on his administration, and two days after the speech fired his Cabinet, leaving Americans confused about his leadership.
Mr. Mattson writes: “Carter’s vision of humbled leadership and engaged citizenship of government and citizens working together to overcome a crisis might offer progressives a way to set realistic expectations about what government can and cannot do.” The current president would do well to consider this lesson.