A Certain Route To Failure Part 1: A Crisis In Confidence
"A Certain Route To Failure" is the Muckrake Podcast's first audio-documentary that will explain how we've arrived at this moment of division, crisis, and confusion, beginning with this pilot episode "A Crisis of Confidence." Though critics and conventional narrative have come to regard President Jimmy Carter's "Malaise Speech" as one of the worst in presidential history, it was actually incredibly popular and well-received at the time. Faced with an energy crisis and a growing societal disillusionment, Carter addressed the United States on July 15, 1979 with a speech that sought to deal with our problems in a reasoned, honest manner and to rally Americans to move beyond divisive politics and consumerist culture. This series will examine this moment and the chain of events it began, culminating in our current situation where Americans feel totally removed from the political process and helpless to change their circumstances. Become a patron so you can hear future episodes before the general public, and be part of an incredible community and discussion: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
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Hello, McCrick listeners, and welcome to the first of a four-part series we're calling A Certain Route to Failure.
This documentary is meant to serve as a chronicle of how we've arrived at this moment of crisis and division, as well as highlight a better way forward.
A quick thank you to our listeners and supporters.
Please stay tuned at the conclusion for a list of our producers who made this project possible.
Before the series ends, we'll have made our way through modern American history and one of the most misunderstood speeches of all time.
And now, A Certain Route to Failure, Part 1.
A Crisis in Confidence.
Good evening.
This is a special night for me.
Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the United States.
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.
It was the summer of 1979.
Americans were suffering under the burden of skyrocketing inflation.
The country was on its way to another recession, while an oil crisis kept people waiting in long lines to pump expensive gas.
The government itself was mired in stagnation and infighting, unable to get tangible policies done to help its constituents.
And that's when President Jimmy Carter sat down in front of the American people So 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.
In Carter's brutally honest and straightforward Southern drawl, he told the American people things that most politicians would never say out loud.
Rather than the typical cliches wrapped in patriotism and unrealistic optimism, he issued a dire warning.
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.
In the so-called malaise speech, Carter laid out a vision of the United States that most Americans did not want to hear.
One in which people did not have confidence in their leaders, where people would be expected to sacrifice their way of life even more, and most importantly, a country whose people were far too wrapped up in their own self-interest.
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.
It is a certain route to failure.
Remarkably, it was met with widespread approval.
and boosted the flagging president's ratings by double digits.
Part sermon, part program, part warning, Hendrick Smith of the New York Times praised Carter for speaking easily, naturally, and confidently, saying it amounted to a political confessional, reaching out from his political island to an American people spiritually at sea. reaching out from his political island to an American people 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.
Thank you.
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.
Though the speech was considered a success, and now, with hindsight, time has only proven Carter incredibly prescient, the Malay speech has been dubbed one of the worst speeches of all time.
An artifact that seemed to indict Carter as an incompetent, disastrous president.
I know, of course, being president, that government actions and legislation can be very important.
That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law.
And I have to admit, we're just mixed success.
An honest assessment of Carter's presidency reveals a troubled but effective leader.
A man who is able to spearhead the Camp David Peace Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, further nuclear arms reduction, and create the conditions necessary for Russia and America to negotiate in good faith.
However, the presidency of Jimmy Carter is generally considered an abject failure.
And a warning to all presidents who would follow in his wake on how not to conduct oneself while in office.
But after listening to the American people, I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America.
A flagging economy, strife around the world, and declining standards of living combined to usher Carter out of the White House after a single term.
His re-election bid, a public rebuke, as challenger Ronald Reagan defeated Carter by over 8 million votes.
And an Electoral College landslide of 489 to 49.
According to UPI, the president knew this morning that he was probably going to lose the election.
His pollster, Patrick Cadell, gave him figures this morning showing him he was trailing Reagan nationally by eight percentage points.
When the results were final, Carter was only able to carry a total of six states and the District of Columbia.
The electoral tally for Reagan by our projections is now over 308.
Carter still at 25.
So what happened?
How did history shift?
and change so quickly.
That is one of the largest imbalances we have seen here in this studio, and maybe one of the largest since we've been using this particular computer setup.
In the shadow of that defeat, and the domination of Reagan over American culture, the Carter presidency came to be known as weak, indecisive, mismanaged, and that it lacked the inspiring imagination and rousing patriotism that Reagan would bring to the political sphere.
While Carter's charity work and election monitoring around the world has been lauded during his post-presidency, it only provided more contrast to his very public failures, and for decades, Carter's name has been a synonym for loser.
Someone left the cable in the rain.
As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government, and for churches, and for schools, the news media, and other institutions.
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.
While Dwight Eisenhower lives in the public consciousness by accurately predicting the perils of the military industrial complex, It was Carter's speech that proved even more prescient to the current political landscape.
It was a condemnation of dangerous political forces within the country This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.
A dire warning of what that undermining might lead to.
You know I'm totally off script right now.
The Green New Deal, right?
Darling, is the wind blowing today?
I'd like to watch television, darling.
Russia, please, if you can, get us Hillary Clinton's emails.
And a call to action for the American people to look into the mirror and wrestle with an existential crisis.
What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country It's 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.
The backdrop for the Malay speech, delivered on July 15, 1979, was a continuing energy crisis that had plagued the United States for the better part of the 70s.
Dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, created a vulnerability for the U.S.
and its allies.
Tensions in the Middle East and continued jockeying for profit and power sparked a series of events that would bring the West to its knees and America to the point of chaos.
And when several circuits break at the same time, we have an energy crisis.
We have at present an absolute shortage of natural gas.
We cannot produce as much as we can use.
This situation is destined to continue indefinitely.
And by indefinitely, I mean not only just the next few years, but as far ahead as we can see.
Furthering the crisis was a revolution in Iran.
The prospect of an oil state in the hands of a 79-year-old priest may be disturbing.
But Khomeini says he does not want power, he simply wants the Shah to go.
Ayatollah, how do you see the present situation in your country?
The struggle in Iran against the Shah is now very intense.
And with the will of God, it is now moving towards its climax.
The Shah had been supported by the West for decades following a U.S.-British-led coup in 1953 that unseated democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh in order to keep the oil industry in Iran from being nationalized and securely under the purview of the two countries.
Fundamentalism took hold with a fury and a force that helped ignite the still impoverished masses in Iran, who felt they had little reason to be grateful to the Shah.
This coup, carried out using widespread disinformation, psychological operations, bribes of officials and leaders, and fake rallies and uprisings for rhetorical effect, resulted in the oppressive Shah's regime that kept the people under constant violent control and seized oil production for the benefit of corporations in America and Britain.
The fabulous profits from oil had not filtered down to them.
The crowd shouted, death to the Shah!
Among the despised symbols of their monarch, the marchers raised pictures of the Shah's antagonist, the bearded, fearside holy man, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Though the coup itself was carried out decades earlier, under the orders of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Allen Dulles Helms CIA, the fallout from the revolution and overthrow of the Shah would plague Jimmy Carter and deliver a mortal blow to his presidency.
But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you.
Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?
The Iranian Revolution was only the latest development in an ongoing energy crisis that saw Carter's predecessor, President Gerald Ford, continually fail to solve the problem.
Now what did the Congress do in February about energy?
In Congress, there's nothing.
But the effects of the ongoing crisis, combined with economic decline, created a state of anxiety and friction within America.
Gas shortages stemming from foreign events and flaws in the domestic system led to long lines of angry motorists in the country's streets, waiting for a chance to get even the smallest drip of gas.
If gas is up to a dollar and a quarter, they'd buy conservatively.
And the gasoline is going up, and I'm used to being able to go when I want to, when I want to, but suddenly I think I'm going to have to start curbing my habits.
The energy crisis and public frustration, including a drastic decline in Carter's poll numbers, left the president and his administration grasping for answers.
It's clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper Deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages.
Deeper, even, than inflation or recession.
And I realize, more than ever, that as President, I need your help.
Solving the gas shortage, an ongoing crisis, would be one thing.
But what Carter and his advisors believed was that something fundamental had changed in the United States of America, and that any solution would need to include bureaucratic measures and, perhaps more importantly, a change in the American people.
I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society, business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors,
To address the problem, Carter invited politicians, business people, consultants, and a broad swath of citizens from all walks of life to brainstorm possible solutions.
This from a Southern governor.
Mr. President, you're not leading this nation.
You're just managing the government.
Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good.
Mr. President, we're in trouble.
The feedback Carter received mostly centered on the need for leadership and a galvanized public.
The United States was ripe for a revival, it seemed.
But Carter was warned by an advisor and pollster named Pat Caddell that there was a problem within American culture that, Not only contributed to the energy crisis, but dwarfed it by comparison.
We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam.
What Cadell found in his polling was that the events of the past two decades had inspired a loss of faith in the country.
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 respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.
While Gerald Ford's unlikely presidency was seen as necessary to stop the hemorrhaging of the Nixon debacle, Jimmy Carter's election was considered a moment of renewal and hope, an opportunity to put the troubling era to rest.
1976.
Across our land, a new beginning is underway, led by a man whose roots are founded in the American tradition.
There have been farmers in Georgia for more than 200 years, and we've been living around here for, oh, 150 years.
The major headline on the editorial page of the Atlantic Constitution is that Jimmy Carter is running for what?
A soft-spoken peanut farmer and governor from Georgia, Carter was perceived as a president who might begin to heal the nation's woes.
A white Southerner, he championed civil rights.
A devout Christian, he spoke of spirituality but respected the division between church and state.
It appeared, leading into the presidential election of 1976, that Carter might serve as a bridge from a tumultuous past to a promising future.
ABC News presents Political Spirit of 76.
This is the final chapter of this bicentennial election year.
Tonight from ABC News Election Center in New York, the results.
Good evening.
I'm Harry Reisner at ABC Election Headquarters.
With me are Barbara Walters and Howard K. Smith.
At the moment, in this first election of our third century, about 2% of the nation's precincts have reported.
And in the popular vote, with about a million or a little bit more than a million votes counted, Gerald Ford is leading Jimmy Carter, 53% to 47%.
That falls in the classification of being interesting, but not significant.
As we know it, a close election always means that there will be challenges, particularly in important states like New York, where the lead that Jimmy Carter has is very small, and already the voting machines in New York City are being impounded after a request by the state Republican chairman.
And we've got a report now from Tom Gerald.
Tom?
Harry, we learn now that President Ford personally authorized his people in New York State to take steps to secure the safety of those ballots, as they put it here, because the President believes there could be some irregularities in the handling of the ballots in New York State.
Popular vote in Wisconsin with 90% of the precincts in.
Carter holds a 50-48% lead.
With those 11 electoral votes, I think Barbara has an important announcement.
Yes, I do.
In the state of Hawaii, with 4 electoral votes, those votes have gone to Carter, and that does it.
ABC now projects Carter is the winner with 272 electoral votes.
Thank you.
This tremendous crowd at 4 o'clock in the morning represents Hundreds of millions of American people who are now ready to see our nation unified.
And I want to congratulate the toughest and most formidable opponent that anyone could possibly have, President Gerald Ford.
Jimmy Carter would narrowly defeat Gerald Ford for the presidency of the United States of America.
Spurred on largely by victories in the South that had been dominated by the Republican Party and their racist Southern strategy since the Civil Rights Movement.
Thousands of people around this country who've had confidence in me.
And I pray that I can live up to your confidence and never disappoint you.
This sea change, coupled with the departure from the divisive and corrupt legacy of Richard Nixon and his successor who had pardoned meant a sense of renewal and promise.
A new start for an America that had been mired in cultural and societal chaos and possibly a new direction moving forward.
There's only one person in this nation who can speak with a clear voice to the American people.
There's only one person in this country who can set a standard of ethics and morality and performance.
There's only one person in this country that can call on the American people to make a sacrifice.
There's only one person in this country that can root out discrimination and hatred and divisions in our nation.
And that person is the president.
But the problems of the past would not be swept aside so easily, and the optimism soon gave way to renewed pessimism.
Covert actions carried out in prosecution of the Cold War, such as the Iranian coup, would have consequences.
Inequalities in private interests led to gridlock in government and a hobbled economy.
These problems, exacerbated by the energy crisis, meant America's shaken faith was here to stay.
These 10 days, confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people.
But it also bore out some of my long-standing concerns about our nation's underlying problems.
We are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.
Until the divisive 1960s, the United States of America had enjoyed a post-war boom as the nation escaped World War II relatively unscathed and with its industry humming with mobilized strength.
This economy, coupled with the social safety nets and progressive policies left over from the New Deal, created in America a blossoming middle class that was able to chase the mythical American dream of owning a home, raising a family, and having a better life than the generation before.
These days are all...
Happy days...
Happy days...
In this period, there emerged the illusion of a consensus, where Americans were supposedly in agreement about politics and culture.
This was spurred by the advent of mass media, relatively widespread economic security, and a lingering sense of accomplishment from the victory over fascism in Europe.
But this consensus was completely fabricated as many Americans were left in the lurch, including people of color, women, and the LGBTQ population, who were largely silenced by violence and intimidation.
Here's great news about two wonderful Barakso hand cleaning products.
Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer wiener.
That is what I truly like to be.
Nap, crack, crack, makes the world go round.
Because America was engaged in a post-war struggle for power against the Soviet Union, much of the emphasis of American society was put on capitalism.
That system was treated as a religious faith, demanding fealty and unquestioning reverence.
American capitalism became synonymous.
And so the very ideas of freedom, liberty, and equality were replaced with purchasing power and amassing of wealth.
Whether it's shopping for hats or shopping for a used car at a Chevrolet dealer's used car lot, a woman likes to take her time.
You're planning to bring the gang in afterwards?
Now you've got the idea!
Put plenty of coke in that refrigerator.
In your Frigidaire cold pantry, there's a place for all your food, fresh and frozen, canned, bottled, and wrapped, new bought, and leftover.
Political circumstances, individual rights, and civil liberties were secondary to acquiring new shiny appliances, products of convenience and status, reducing Americans to economic competitors against one another.
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.
The internal conflicts of race, sexism, sexuality, prejudice, and militarism would inevitably find their way to the surface after years of repression and denial.
The civil rights movement of the 60s was a rejection of the so-called consensus culture and a message to white Americans that not all was well in the United States and that its shortcomings would need to be addressed.
The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism.
We must devote at least as much to our children's education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels.
The crusade for equal rights and the backlash against the unethical war in Vietnam rocked the United States, highlighted America's shortcomings, and created a sharp divide between the left and the right, white and black, Democrat and Republican.
The GOP, spearheaded by Richard Nixon, recognized the opportunity and, instead of attempting to heal the nation or move it forward, capitalized by carving the electorate into targeted demographics and appealing to the South and whites, both unsettled by the civil rights movement, to build a dominant political base.
The choice we make in 1968 will determine not only the future of America, But the future of peace and freedom in the world for the last third of the 20th century, and the question that we answer tonight, can America meet this great challenge?
The message of the Republicans was clear.
The liberal movements of the 60s had gone too far.
As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.
We hear sirens in the night.
We see Americans hating each other, fighting each other, killing each other at home.
What was important in America was the economy and the ability for white people to accumulate wealth, buy whatever they wanted, and be left alone in their homes.
And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish.
Did we come all this way for this?
Did American boys die in Normandy and Korea and in Ballyforge for this?
Nixon and the Republican Party's appeal was supposedly for law and order, but amounted to a clandestine project to undo the progress of FDR's New Deal and the gains of the people's movements of the 1960s.
In doing this, the GOP sought to quell the marginalized communities and return the wealthy and their businesses to a place of dominance in American society.
This required a new round of oppression in terms of law enforcement and cultural battles.
As well as the reestablishment of the consensus illusion of the 1940s and 50s.
The time has come.
The time has come for us to leave the valley of despair and climb the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn.
A new day for America and a new dawn for peace and freedom in the world.
This project would assure Americans there was no need to take an active role in politics.
It meant that political action was only as complicated as choosing between Coke and Pepsi.
With the people busy living their lives, special interests and the politicians who serve them would be free to pilot America with little in the way of opposition.
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.
By the time Jimmy Carter delivered his address, he had recognized the scope and dire nature of the problem.
Consumerism as a philosophy and distraction, a natural state of being, had begun to separate the people from the business of politics and turned it into something they might watch on their brand new television from the comfort of their just-purchased couched in their recently mortgaged home.
The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees.
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.
and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.
That's what I want.
The surge of consumerism and a country sliding back to its passive nature following years of clashes, not to mention the rise of political coverage on television, created a vast divide between the people and their government.
Politicians relied on special interests and lobbyists to determine agendas.
Problems that might have been solved via cooperation were mired by a hall of mirrors in which no one could quite be sure who was acting in good faith and who was self-dealing.
Decision 80.
NBC News reports the results of our national election.
We have been polling around the country in the key states, NBC News and the Associated Press, and what we're learning in the key states is that makes us believe that Ronald Reagan will win a very substantial victory tonight.
I promised you... I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you.
So I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt.
The people of the United States have made their choice.
And of course I accept that decision.
But I have to admit, not with the same enthusiasm that I accepted the decision four years ago.
About an hour ago, I called Governor Reagan in California.
And I told him that I congratulated him for a fine victory.
I look forward to working closely with him during the next few weeks.
Jimmy Carter's so-called malaise speech was meant as a wake-up call for the United States of America.
A sobering but impassioned diagnosis of the reasons the government was failing to work on their behalf, as well as an honest assessment of how the culture at large had created the crisis.
If America was going to heal and move forward, its people needed to rediscover their moral compass.
No amount of flag-waving rhetoric, talk of American exceptionalism, First of all, we must face the truth.
And then we can change our course.
in any real or lasting way.
For the ship to be righted, Americans needed to reject the shallow culture of consumerism and divisiveness and help with the heavy lifting. - First of all, we must face the truth and then we can change our course.
We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves and faith in the future of this nation.
Jimmy Carter addressed the nation on July 15, 1979 in a mature, reasoned manner.
He delivered an assessment of the actual problems plaguing the nation and a warning should they continue.
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.
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.
Though the speech was met with resounding support at the time and bolstered the spirits of the people, Carter was doomed to suffer more defeats and more crises in his presidency.
And a challenger who embodied the very illusory mythology Carter decried was waiting in the wings.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ronald Reagan.
Good evening.
I'm here tonight to announce my intention to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
Now there are those in our land today, however, who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power.
That we're weak and fearful, reduced to bickering with each other.
They tell us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been.
That the America of the coming years will be a place where, because of our past excesses, It will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true.
I don't believe that.
And I don't believe you do either.
That's why I'm seeking the presidency.
The very type of politics Jimmy Carter had warned America about came to pass as he eyed a diminishing opportunity at his second term.
Ronald Reagan was all spectacle, all division, and able to take Richard Nixon's strategy of conquer and divide and dress it in stars and stripes and a smile worthy of the movies.
Any inroads Carter had made in reaching the American public and reforming politics was sabotaged, as Reagan provided a sleeker, easier solution.
Greed is good.
Spend your money And don't worry about politics anymore.
We hope you enjoyed this first installment of The Certain Route to Failure.
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We wanted to take a moment and thank our producers who have stepped up and chipped in to make this project possible.
A heartfelt thank you to Brian E. Castor, Jenna Cosgrove, Laura DeMasso, Jewel Foran, Jack Flowers, Anna Rose Hart, Jamie Heifel, Tom Heineman, Jess Janda, Jessa, Jill on his rocker, Molly Katzen, Pamela Klein.
We could not have possibly done this without the support of Kyle Kwasnick, Thomas Layfield, Persis Levy, Carrie Mangus, Liz Monday, Jen Otis, Will Powers, Tony S., Lynn Schneider, Steve, Rob Cunningham, Donald Puckett, Amy Tymon, and Jackie Rob Cunningham, Donald Puckett, Amy Tymon, and Jackie Stewart.
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