Source: Liberal Currents
by Alan Elrod
“On July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter delivered an address to the American people from the Oval Office. Formally known as ‘A Crisis of Confidence,’ the address has since been memorialized as ‘the malaise speech,’ and held up as a prime example of Carter’s morally rigid and politically inept presidency — one of the great last gasps of the miserable 1970s. Oil shortages, turbulence in the Middle East, and the lingering shadows of Watergate and the Vietnam War left Americans, in Carter’s view, morally and civically adrift. And, in what most analysts have considered a failure of a presidential speech, he told them so.” (04/10/26)