In July 1979 Jimmy Carter, then President of the USA, faced with a declining economy, inflation, oil shortages and a hostage crisis in Iran, made a speech from the White House to the American people. The speech- The Crisis Of Confidence- became known as the 'malaise' speech. In it Carter spoke of the numerous challenges the USA faced, crises he dated back to the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King in 1960s and the loss of confidence in politicians that Watergate had provoked.
Carter had met with a range of business, political, religious and academic leaders in an attempt to revitalise his government. The energy crisis and inflation were massive problems. Carter and his advisor Pat Caddell came up with the idea that the USA was facing not just an energy crisis, not just an inflation crisis but a crisis of confidence, that something fundamental had gone wrong that could not be fixed merely by legislation. In the Malaise speech he referred to conversations he'd had with other people- 'Mr President', he was told, 'we are facing a moral and spiritual crisis'. The entire speech, with Carter's solutions can be found here. This is the part that is most associated with the malaise-
'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'
At first many Americans responded positively to the speech, it struck a chord and polled well. But Ronald Reagan and his team, campaigning for the Presidential election that November, turned it around and used it to batter Carter (whose troubles just increased as the November election neared). 'I find no national malaise', Reagan said, 'I find nothing wrong with the American people'. This boosterism was one factor that propelled Reagan into the White House in January 1980. I was remained of the speech when Jimmy Carter died recently aged 100, the last President of the Roosevelt era and tradition.
It also reminded me of the film 20th Century Women, a 2016 film directed by Mike Mills (not the R.E.M. Mike Mills), one I've watched twice since it came out, a film set in Santa Barbara, California in 1979. Carter's speech is on the TV at one point, the crisis and malaise Carter articulates felt by some of the characters in the film. 20th Century Women is the story of an unconventional household, a middle aged woman Dorothea (Annette Bening) raising a fifteen year old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) in a large, ramshackle house also occupied by two lodgers, a young female photographer with cervical cancer and a middle aged male mechanic/ carpenter, plus Jamie's friend/ maybe girlfriend Julie (the trio played by Ella Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup). There is feminism, punk rock, Talking Heads, Black Flag, hardcore punk purism and violence, sexual encounters, a punk club in Los Angeles and an end of the 70s sense of things coming to a conclusion, an unclear terminus. In one scene at a skatepark Jamie gets beaten up for liking Talking Heads. Art, music and photography, are a key theme in the film, and the punk world is there as a door to somewhere else, to modernity, some kind of freedom, a way out- escapism too. It's a film about two generations of women at the end of the 1970s and how between them they try to raise Jamie as a modern male in the modern world. Carter's malaise speech is very much part of the film's world.
The soundtrack is packed with punk and New Wave artists, with songs by Talking Heads, The Clash, The Raincoats, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Germs, Suicide, Devo and Buzzcocks as well as the big band music of the 30s and 40s that Dorothea remembers from her pre- war youth. These three songs all fit not just in the film really well but also as a musical backdrop to Jimmy Carter's spiritual malaise and his assertion that 'piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose'.
Talking Heads debut album '77 featured this song, Don't Worry About The Government, a most un- punk song lyrically, a sentimental and optimistic celebration of civic leaders and community (although it can probably be read as satire too but I'm not sure that was necessarily Byrne's intention).
Don't You Worry About The Government
The Raincoats released Fairytale In the Supermarket in 1979, a 7" single on Rough Trade. It's a sardonic look at late 20th century life- love, time, books, how to live- while the trio play inspiring rattly, trebly, homemade post- punk.
Fairytale In The Supermarket
Suicide's Cheree came out in 1978, essential synth punk rock. Martin Rev and Alan Vega were true innovators making existential music, punk rock without the guitars.
Cheree
The film also has a score by American conductor, writer and musician Roger Neill, several pieces of music full of echo and reverb, wobbly cellos and E- bowed guitars. This one, Santa Barbara 1979, is from the film's opening scenes, a lovely, warm ambient incantation.