MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When American presidents address the public, even during times of strife, they often try to strike a hopeful tone.
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RONALD REAGAN: The things that unite us - America's past, of which we're so proud.
BARACK OBAMA: This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team.
DONALD TRUMP: As long as we never, ever stop fighting for a better future, then there will be nothing that America cannot do.
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KELLY: That was presidents Trump, Obama and Reagan, hitting notes of uplift. Contrast to that, with a speech from July 15, 1979 - height of an energy crisis, unemployment, inflation, and President Jimmy Carter spoke to what he saw in the spirit of the American public.
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JIMMY CARTER: 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.
KELLY: That address became known as the malaise speech, and it's probably the most widely debated speech of Carter's career. Well, as we remember the 39th president this week, we wanted to look back at that speech and its legacy, so we called historian Kevin Mattson. He literally wrote the book on that speech - a book titled "What The Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?" Kevin Mattson, welcome.
KEVIN MATTSON: Great to be here with you.
KELLY: So I just ticked through some of the problems the country was facing when Carter came out and delivered this speech. Would you flesh out just what was happening in the country in July 1979? What was the backdrop?
MATTSON: Well, OPEC was making it difficult for Americans to think that they could get gas at an affordable amount - and get gas, period - because they were cutting off a lot of the oil that they exported to the United States and other countries of the West. And what I think is important about that is that, you know, obviously, America feels like it's being beholden to a third world set of countries, to use a pejorative term. But it's basically cutting off supplies, and what happens then is, because of that, the impact is felt immediately on the gas lines that start to form - people rushing out to get gas as best they can.
And one of the stories that I tell about the gas lines, where I think you really see the kind of corrupt individualism that Jimmy Carter is going to decry, is a story of a woman who cuts into the gas line and says, I'm pregnant, and so, therefore, I think I should go before other people. And she gets up out of her car to do something, and the two pillows that she had shoved up into her blouse fall down on the ground, making it clear that she was not pregnant, and she was just playing for - trying to get first place. And I think that that's the sort of thing that Jimmy Carter is reflecting upon himself, is the corrosive element of individualism, self-interest, people who can't see, you know, a public good any longer. And that's, I think, what's deeply troubling to him, and that's the issue that he addresses in the speech.
KELLY: So I read that Carter was originally scheduled to give a speech, address the nation, on Independence Day. He canceled at the last minute, and then, 11 days later, he comes out swinging with this speech. What was he trying to do?
MATTSON: Well, what he did between the cancellation of the original speech to the one that's known as the malaise speech, he was basically trying his best to draw from some of the conversations that he decided to hold at Camp David. And this is a vast array of type of people - priests, political leaders, civil rights activists, people like that, across a broad spectrum. And he listens to what they say is wrong, and he then translates that into his own language to basically make an argument that, I am a part of the problem - no doubt. He's not above it all. But at the same time, he thinks that the American people need to do some soul-searching and ask themselves, how did we get into the position where there's this kind of rampant individualism that seems to be out of control?
KELLY: So initially, it went down quite well, right?
MATTSON: Yes.
KELLY: His approval - within hours, his approval ratings had jumped 11 points.
MATTSON: Yep.
KELLY: And then what happened?
MATTSON: Right. I should point out that, having spent a lot of time at the Carter Library, I was able to go through written notes that were being sent to the president from ordinary citizens about what they were going to do. One person said, I'm going to ride my moped to work. I'm not going to ride my car. Another person has talked about using a bicycle to get to work. People talked about keeping their thermostats lower than they usually would. I think that the speech hit people because it was a desire for citizen activity, at least in part, to solve the problem. And so he does quite well. He gets the biggest bump that he has had for quite some time. And he decides, for some reason or other, to fire his entire cabinet, which just creates this, like, maelstrom of despair and confusion on the part of the American people because that didn't seem to really be what he suggested in the speech. And so his polls plummet after that, and he's back into the place that he was probably before July 5 and July 15.
KELLY: The full title of your book argues that Carter's speech should have changed the country. Did it? I mean, did this speech ultimately change America, Americans' behavior in any measurable way?
MATTSON: I think that among some of those people that I mentioned who were sending notes to the White House, there was a kind of flickering of some sort of enthusiasm for unity. But I think that, you know, some people asked the question - and I think it's a fair question - is it just too late in the game to really make a significant dent on the consumer culture that's creating so many problems as he sees it? The other problem is that he can't get - seem to get across the point that he's not blaming the American people, which he will immediately be described as in the words of Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy, who's running in a - in the upcoming primary against Jimmy Carter. You know...
KELLY: Yeah. I mean, Reagan in his campaign, when he announced his presidency, he said, I find no national...
MATTSON: Yes.
KELLY: ...Malaise of the American people. It became a talking point for the opposition.
MATTSON: That's absolutely right. And the other thing that Reagan says in his inaugural speech is that - not only what you mentioned, but also that we have the right to dream what we want to dream and hope for what we hope for, and we don't need sacrifice. Sacrifice is a bad word for Ronald Reagan as it would be a positive word for Jimmy Carter.
KELLY: Do we know - later in his life, years after he delivered this speech, do we know how Jimmy Carter himself came to think of it?
MATTSON: He said it was his best speech. He felt like he nailed it, you know? It was, like - it worked for him. He had said - about the original plan for a speech, he said, I just don't want to - and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this on air, but he says, I just don't want to [expletive] the American people any longer. I want to be realistic. I want to talk about some significant crises that the country faces, and I want to do that. And I think he thinks at the time that he's doing exactly that. If it hadn't been for the cabinet, you know, firings, who knows what might have happened?
KELLY: Kevin Mattson is a professor of history at Ohio University and author of the book "What The Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?: Jimmy Carter, America's 'Malaise,' And The Speech That Should Have Changed The Country." Kevin Mattson, thank you. Happy New Year.
MATTSON: Thank you. Happy New Year.
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