Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" Speech

It was thirty years ago today that President Jimmy Carter delivered his speech on the crisis of confidence in the United States at the time. The economy was tanking, cities were dying, and a major oil shortage gripped the nation in the aftermath of a nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. (Worse was to come - Iran would hold American embassy staffers in Tehran hostage and the Soviet Union would invade Afghanistan.) Carter, noting the spiritual emptiness of American life, gave a speech that was more of a sermon than an address. (July 15, 1979, was, appropriately enough, a Sunday.) He called on the American people to find purpose in their lives, urged them to renounce pursuit of material wealth for its own sake, and asked them to demonstrate the faith he had in them to by recommitting themselves to the political and social foundations of America that he knew would endure.

Though the word never appeared in the text, it was called the "malaise" speech.

Although Carter appealed to the better angels of the nature of Americans, the tone and cadence of his words suggested that he found fault in the behavior of Americans and suggested they had no great goals beyond living "the good life." Americans don't like to be lectured to, and they responded to Carter's speech by electing Ronald Reagan, a man devoted to preserving the good life at the expense of the American political and social fabric Carter found unraveling. Carter let Americans know that their excessive living patterns had to be scaled back and they had to get more serious about their lives.

As James Howard Kunstler wrote, Carter told Americans the truth and they hated them for it.

Today, we're trying to overcome another crisis of confidence as we attempt to recover from the worst recession in sixty years. President Obama, like Carter before him, prefers to talk to the American people like adults. This time we appear to be ready to listen.