A piece in the Seattle Times caught my eye . . .
We are in a grand national funk. We are having, to borrow the infamous words of Jimmy Carter, a "crisis of confidence."
For 35 years the Gallup polling firm has asked how much trust we have in our institutions, from the presidency on down to yours truly, the press.
Two weeks ago, Gallup released this year's version. It is stunning how much we the people have lost faith.
Only 12 percent say they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress — the worst rating ever measured for any institution in the history of this poll.
The U.S. Supreme Court got its lowest rating ever. The presidency has scored its lowest the past two years.
What's striking is how much more skeptical we are now than even back in 1979, when then-president Carter gave his "national malaise" speech.
That speech was the at least the beginning of the end for Jimmy Carter. I remember it but only vaguely. So I found it and read it. It's stunning. Here's the heart of it . . .I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.
It is a crisis of confidence.
It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.
The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom; and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.
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.
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. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.
We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.
We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation’s resources were limitless until 1973 when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.
These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.
Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests.
You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.
Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do?
Obama could take those words as his own and people today would know exactly what he meant. We've come so far, and traveled so little.
And what, pray tell, was the predisposing cause of this national malaise? What was the straw that tipped over the poor camel? High energy prices.
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.
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.
And what did Carter propose? In an act of leadership not seen since, he committed political suicide on multiple fronts by . . .
- Calling for a cap on foreign energy. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977-- never."
- Calling for import quotas.
- Massive financial support for developing oil shale, clean coal, "gasahol", and solar.
- A national energy security entity to lead the effort, much like we did with synthetic rubber during "the war."
- Mandatory cuts by utility companies in the use of oil.
- Windfall profits tax.
- Creation of an energy mobilization board.
- Authorization for standby gas rationing.
- Mandatory and voluntary conservation.
Playing the "what if" game is pointless, but it's interesting to think where we'd be if any three of those ideas had stuck. More to the point, I wonder if there is anywhere the political will to speak to the nation in truly leadership-like ways about big issues like energy, social security, or social justice. True believers of market forces and libertarian politics say "no" and "no need." Let the market sort it out. I worry that we have reached an age, where reality has outstripped the limits of either conservative or liberal orthodoxy as those terms are now understood. One fact pointing in that direction is the massive lack of confidence in the institutions that hold our votes, our laws, and our money. The argument that a more perfect realization of orthodoxy would solve the problems seems hollow given that there has never been a large scale example of perfect orthodoxy in the history of mankind.
Tags: JimmyCarter, National Malaise speech, crisis of confidence
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