But the high-water mark of sociological influence on the Presidency may well have come in the summer of 1979. The typical story of that period reads something like the following: As the country grappled with high inflation and energy shortages, President Jimmy Carter delivered a speech diagnosing a national malaise, which fell flat and contributed to his eventual loss to Ronald Reagan. In his 2009 book What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President? Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise,” and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country, Ohio University Professor Kevin Mattson fills in some of the gaps in the story of the speech. For starters, Carter never actually used the word “malaise.” But beyond that, Mattson’s book illustrates the extent of sociological thinking’s influence on Carter in the weeks leading up to the speech.
In an attempt to take the pulse of the nation and investigate his hunch that the nation’s troubles ran deeper than long lines at gas stations, the President met with dozens of academics, religious leaders, political figures, and ordinary Americans, as well as his own pollsters and advisors. I took particular interest in Mattson’s references to Carter’s meetings with Robert Bellah and Christopher Lasch. Bellah, a sociologist from the Univeristy of California at Berkeley, advised Carter to speak uncomfortable truths to the public about the decay of the bonds that held them together. Americans had once shared a sort of “national covenant” – a commitment to one another that transcended self-interest. By the 1970s, Mattson describes Bellah as telling the President, this covenant had eroded into a “contract model” of society that facilitated the growth of narcissism. This trend toward selfishness was further discussed in Carter’s conversations with Christopher Lasch. While he was not a sociologist by trade, Lasch and his book The Culture of Narcissism, a surprise bestseller in 1979, have long received considerable attention in sociological circles. Intriguingly, Mattson describes Lasch as cautioning Carter that a discussion of the need for sacrifice might fall on deaf ears in light of increasing public cynicism.
Ultimately, on July 15th, 1979, Carter gave a speech in which the themes Bellah and Lasch had discussed figured prominently. Carter appeared to hope that Lasch had been wrong about the way the public would react to a call for sacrifice on behalf of the common good. The President spoke of a crisis of confidence that he saw sweeping the land and the renewed public commitments that would be needed to overcome it. In other words, he exhibited more confidence in the ability of the American people to acknowledge and respond to Laschian concerns than did Lasch himself. Among the President’s words were the following: