A Malaise Afflicting America

In a post over at Bull Moose, Marshall Wittman makes the following observation:

"Bush has become the conservatives' Carter -
a hapless President wandering aimlessly adrift
across the country from disaster to to disaster.
W. has even told us to drive less to conserve
gasoline (which is not a bad idea but it has to
infuriate the Hummer-loving right). It is only
a matter of time that Jimmy Bush urges us to
turn down the thermostat. Will George W.
Carter address the nation in a cardigan and
bemoan a national malaise?"

The snarky media scribes over at The Note evidently drew the same comparison. They went as far as claiming that someone in the Bush administration had provided them with an advanced copy of the President's upcoming speech and then printed almost the entire text of Jimmy Carter's 1979 conservation speech. In order to make sure as many readers as possible didn't get the joke, however, they edited the speech significantly by changing the dates and removing paragraphs that would have clearly dated it. The text of the speech is followed by the simple statement: "President Bush will give these remarks (or something like them) when he meets with Texas officials regarding hurricane damage at 10:50 am ET in Beaumont, TX." That's it, that one parenthetical phrase (and a buried link to the actual text) is as far as they bothered to go to tip off their non-politically-nerdy readers that this was not really Bush's speech. But that kind of condescension is fairly typical of The Note, whose writers seem much more interested in making inside jokes and passing along press corps conventional wisdom than actually informing people of anything. I'm entirely confident that a significant number of Note readers (particularly those not old enough to remember Carter's speech) did not understand that this was meant to be satirical, and were just confused. But then again, I'm also confident that the writers of The Note didn't care. If people weren't sufficiently well-versed in politics to get their funny joke, so be it.

But what annoys me even more is that the writers of The Note also inserted a line into the speech that was not originally there. Buried in the middle of their version of speech is the line "[s]imply put, there is a malaise afflicting America." While Carter's speech has since become known as his "malaise speech," he never actually used that word. The term 'malaise' was first used by pollster Pat Caddell in the aftermath of the speech, and has since been carelessly attributed to Carter on countless occasions (as Wittman does in his post today). The writers at The Note went out of their way to perpetuate this popular misconception with their sneaky editing job. Therefore, even their preferred readers--i.e., the politically astute chattering classes--were likely misled by the post and assumed that the made-up line had been in Carter's original speech.

But I digress. The original intent of this post was not to rant about The Note, but to make a more substantive point about Bush, Carter, and energy policy. Both Wittman's post and yesterday's Note attempt to mock President Bush by comparing him to the hapless Jimmy Carter. Now I'll be the first to admit that Carter was an ineffective President and that there are a lot of similarities between Bush's current situation and the one Carter faced back in 1979. But given everything we know now, isn't it about time Carter's much-maligned "malaise speech" got the credit it deserves? I encourage you to read it in it's entirety. Besides being tragically prescient, the speech is incredibly candid and personal by Presidential standards. It reads more like a sermon or a confession than anything else, and one that could have saved our country a lot of heartache had it not been derided and ignored.

The following are some of the key passages from Carter's speech:

"I promised you a president who is not isolated
from the people, who feels your pain, and who
shares your dreams and who draws his
strength and his wisdom from you. During the
past three years I've spoken to you on many
occasions about national concerns, the energy
crisis, reorganizing the government, our
nation's economy, and issues of war and
especially peace. But over those years the
subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the
press conferences have become increasingly
narrow, focused more and more on what the
isolated world of Washington thinks is
important. Gradually, you've heard more and
more about what the government thinks or
what the government should be doing and less
and less about our nation's hopes, our
dreams, and our vision of the future . . .

In a nation that was proud of hard work,
strong families, close-knit communities, and
our faith in God, 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. . . .

In little more than two decades we've gone from
a position of energy independence to one in which
almost half the oil we use comes from foreign
countries, at prices that are going through the roof.
Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already
taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our
people. This is the direct cause of the long lines
which have made millions of you spend aggravating
hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the
increased inflation and unemployment that we
now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign
oil threatens our economic independence and the
very security of our nation. The energy crisis is
real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present
danger to our nation. These are facts and we
simply must face them. . . .

I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy
policy of the United States. Beginning this
moment, this nation will never use more foreign
oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on,
every new addition to our demand for energy
will be met from our own production and our
own conservation. The generation-long growth
in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped
dead in its tracks right now and then reversed
as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight
setting the further goal of cutting our dependence
on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next
decade -- a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels
of imported oil per day. . . .

To give us energy security, I am asking for the
most massive peacetime commitment of funds
and resources in our nation's history to develop
America's own alternative sources of fuel --
from coal, from oil shale, from plant products
for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from
the sun. . . .

I propose the creation of an energy security
corporation to lead this effort to replace
2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day
by 1990. The corporation I will issue up to
$5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially
want them to be in small denominations so
that average Americans can invest directly
in America's energy security. . . .

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money,
and that is why Congress must enact the
windfall profits tax without delay. It will be
money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars
that we ship to foreign countries to pay for
foreign oil, these funds will be paid by
Americans to Americans. These funds will go
to fight, not to increase, inflation and
unemployment. . . .

To make absolutely certain that nothing stands
in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge
Congress to create an energy mobilization board
which, like the War Production Board in World
War II, will have the responsibility and
authority to cut through the red tape, the
delays, and the endless roadblocks to
completing key energy projects. . . .

I'm proposing a bold conservation program to
involve every state, county, and city and every
average American in our energy battle. This
effort will permit you to build conservation into
your homes and your lives at a cost you can
afford. . . .

Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us,
so we will increase aid to needy Americans to
cope with rising energy prices. We often think
of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact,
it is the most painless and immediate way of
rebuilding our nation's strength. Every gallon of
oil each one of us saves is a new form of
production. It gives us more freedom, more
confidence, that much more control over our own
lives. . . .

So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help
us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our
country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our
confidence in the future, and give our nation
and all of us individually a new sense of
purpose.

I do not promise you that this struggle for
freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick
way out of our nation's problems, when the
truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort.
What I do promise you is that I will lead our
fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle,
and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will
act. We can manage the short-term shortages
more effectively and we will, but there are no
short-term solutions to our long-range
problems. There is simply no way to avoid
sacrifice."

During the speech, Carter offers the following warning:

"We are at a turning point in our history.
There are two paths to choose. One is a
path I've warned about tonight, the path
that leads to fragmentation and self-interest.
Down that road lies a mistaken idea of
freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves
some advantage over others. That path
would be one of constant conflict between
narrow interests ending in chaos and
immobility. It is a certain route to failure."

Twenty-six years later, it's pretty clear what path we chose. Carter's speech was disparaged not because it was wrong, but because it was not what people wanted to hear. He was too honest, too candid, too far-sighted in his vision. This allowed others to step in tell people what they wanted to hear: that there were easy answers, that there was no need to sacrifice or alter our lifestyles in any significant way. So instead of reducing our consumption, we greatly increased it. Instead of pursuing alternative fuels, we simply purchased more oil. Now we face all the same issues again, only much worse. We are now much more dependent on foreign oil. Moreover, our energy dependence has given enormous leverage to hostile regimes and greatly confounded our efforts to fight the principal threat of our time, terrorism.

Much of the criticism of Carter's presidency is well-deserved, but not on the topic of energy. If we as a nation had followed Carter's advice and implemented his policy proposals, we would be infinitely better off today. If Bush becomes the next Jimmy Carter on this subject, it should be a reason to praise him, not deride him. But I'm not holding my breath. Bush has never called on Americans (other than those in our Armed Forces) to sacrifice anything, and I doubt he's going to get serious about it now.

UPDATE: The version of The Note which I'm referring to (Sept. 27) is apparently no longer available on ABC's website. I can't find it. When/if it resurfaces, I'll provide a link. If anyone can find it, please send the link to me. Thanks.

UPDATE II: John at Americablog was similarly annoyed by yesterday's version of The Note and admits that he was initially duped by it. Wonkette was duped as well.