"A President Speaks His Truth and Takes His Licks" Defining Moments of Carter's Failed Presidency

Mr. Carter’s political problems in July 1979 are easy to chart. The energy crisis was in full, ripe bloom; there were gas lines across the country, and truckers were organizing protests. Mr. Carter’s close friend Bert Lance, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, had just been indicted for defrauding the government through illegal loans. And one of Mr. Carter’s former speechwriters, James Fallows, had published a devastating article called “The Passionless Presidency” in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

“I came to think that Carter believes 50 things,” Mr. Fallows wrote, “but not one thing.” ,p> The impression stuck. Mr. Carter was seen as dithering and ineffectual. His approval rating in some national polls was lower than Richard M. Nixon’s during Watergate. A “Draft Kennedy” movement, referring to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who would unsuccessfully challenge Mr. Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, began to grow. To cap it all off, word got out that Mr. Carter had been attacked by a hissing rabbit while in a small boat, an event that would soon make jeering national headlines.

We misremember the speech today, Mr. Mattson argues, thanks to the “malaise” tag that was later attached to it. (He blames the old Washington hand Clark Clifford, then 72, for telling journalists before the speech that Mr. Carter was worried about a “malaise” in the country.)

Mr. Mattson is fond of Mr. Carter, but he can’t help ultimately observing: “Being a squeaky-clean outsider didn’t translate well into actual governance, a brutal truth about the Carter presidency.”

From the book review
Mr. Mattson points out that Mr. Carter’s speech, at first, appeared to have been a success. Time and Newsweek approved; so did David Broder of The Washington Post. Mr. Carter, overnight, got an 11-point bump in some polls. Mr. Carter destroyed whatever momentum he might have created, however, by asking his entire cabinet to resign two days later. It made his presidency seem to be melting down. The New Republic’s editors wrote: “The past two weeks will be remembered as the period when President Jimmy Carter packed it in, put the finishing touches on a failed presidency.”

The article's best line
To cap it all off, word got out that Mr. Carter had been attacked by a hissing rabbit while in a small boat, an event that would soon make jeering national headlines.

An observation as brutally revealing from one who is described as being fond of the Plains Peanut guy speaks volumes about the sort of egregious failure The Carter Presidency was.

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