Rorotoko

In a nutshell

I want a reader to enter a truly bizarre world: America in 1979.

It was a period of disco and disco demolition, cocaine and divorce, an Iranian revolution and oil embargo plus the Three Mile Island nuclear power crisis. It was a time when intellectuals feared America’s power was in decline to the Middle East and we were becoming a nation of narcissists. It was a time when Americans murdered one another on gas lines. It was a time when the Vietnam War had been over for four years but Americans hadn’t really come to terms with the war’s implications. The first popular movies about Vietnam start to appear at this time—including Coming Home, Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now (the latter was actually shown at the White House during 1979, an event I talk about in the book).

I recreate that world of America in 1979 for the reader. And then I place Jimmy Carter into this context and explain how he decided to give one of the toughest speeches in the history of presidential speeches. We still erroneously call it the “malaise speech”—the word “malaise,” in fact, never appeared in it. The speech is at the heart of the book, and it is about the country’s decline, about the energy crisis, and about what Americans can do to pull themselves out of these and to chart a path towards energy independence.

This is a story about one president worrying a great deal about the psychic state of America and wanting to address that problem head-on. Much of the book deals with how Jimmy Carter, pushed by an array of advisors behind the screens, decided to make the speech.

The wide angle

The book addresses broad questions of American national identity. Who are we as a nation: selfish individualists or citizens and members of a commonwealth? Can America be a nation with a sense of humility and “limits” in the face of the emerging crisis in the Middle East—the Iranian revolution and the dawn of Islamic fundamentalism and a resulting oil embargo?

Carter tried to explore these questions by reading numerous social observers from the time. He read Reinhold Niebuhr as well as the writings of Christopher Lasch and Daniel Bell, two leading social theorists who pondered if consumer capitalism destroyed civic virtue. He also went to the heart of one of our most pressing problems—one that still exists today: our over-reliance or dependency on fossil fuels imported from abroad, and how this makes us susceptible to a whole range of problems.

To this question Carter offered a solution that we ignored—I believe, to our peril—when we elected Ronald Reagan president in 1980. Much of the story is about the rise of the conservative revolution during Jimmy Carter’s presidency—the formation of the Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell’s organization), the rise of conservative think tanks, the arguments made by “neoconservatives,” and the increasing popularity of Ronald Reagan.

What led me to want to examine this issue was teaching undergraduates this speech in contemporary history classes. My students were always amazed by the speech’s tough message. So I wanted to explain how Carter came to conclude he needed to give a speech that had so much political risk behind it. I remember quite distinctly one student who said to me, when I taught Carter’s speech during George W. Bush’s presidency: “I wish we had a president who told us difficult truths.” I remember being shocked by that, and inspired. The speech’s story deserved to be told.

Who are we as a nation: selfish individualists or citizens and members of a commonwealth?