Malaise Speech Anniversary: Was Carter right?
Was it the greatest speech of his presidency or political suicide?
Three decades on, the answer may well be both.
Thirty years ago Wednesday, President Jimmy Carter delivered a speech — “The Crisis of Confidence” — that became one of the most pilloried in modern American history.
It was an address in which he looked critically at himself and his own failures but also warned Americans in dire, near-apocalyptic terms about the potential consequences of theirs.
“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America,” preached the president, a devout evangelical Christian who saw in Americans a crisis of faith not in God but in the nation — and in themselves.
Delivered against a background of inflation, rising oil prices and gas lines, the address was derisively dubbed the “malaise” speech by the press. And when Carter requested resignations from his entire Cabinet a few days later, the speech became all the proof anyone needed that he was blaming Americans for his own mistakes.
What few recall is the speech’s actual content — which still resonates strongly in the current economic crisis— or the fact that it was actually well-received by the public at the time.
“It was an incredibly successful speech, until he fired the Cabinet, which changed the whole tenor of things,” said Patrick Caddell, who was the president’s pollster and a chief architect of the speech.
“It got a great reception. I’ve never felt more that American political journalism bordered on Soviet history-making than on that speech,” he said. “From the misnaming of it, to the trying to say later that it was unpopular — the historical revisionism. The speech itself was an extraordinary success.” ...
Read entire article at Politico.com
Three decades on, the answer may well be both.
Thirty years ago Wednesday, President Jimmy Carter delivered a speech — “The Crisis of Confidence” — that became one of the most pilloried in modern American history.
It was an address in which he looked critically at himself and his own failures but also warned Americans in dire, near-apocalyptic terms about the potential consequences of theirs.
“The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America,” preached the president, a devout evangelical Christian who saw in Americans a crisis of faith not in God but in the nation — and in themselves.
Delivered against a background of inflation, rising oil prices and gas lines, the address was derisively dubbed the “malaise” speech by the press. And when Carter requested resignations from his entire Cabinet a few days later, the speech became all the proof anyone needed that he was blaming Americans for his own mistakes.
What few recall is the speech’s actual content — which still resonates strongly in the current economic crisis— or the fact that it was actually well-received by the public at the time.
“It was an incredibly successful speech, until he fired the Cabinet, which changed the whole tenor of things,” said Patrick Caddell, who was the president’s pollster and a chief architect of the speech.
“It got a great reception. I’ve never felt more that American political journalism bordered on Soviet history-making than on that speech,” he said. “From the misnaming of it, to the trying to say later that it was unpopular — the historical revisionism. The speech itself was an extraordinary success.” ...