Jimmy Carter Believed in American 'Exceptionalism'
And then Ronald Reagan did what conservatives have been doing forever: He relied on fear, ignorance, emotion, and here we are today.
In 1977, at Jimmy Carter’s presidential inauguration, solar panels were installed to warm the reviewing stand. Two and a half years later, President Carter installed them on the roof of the White House to demonstrate America’s commitment to renewable energy. The country was still working to recover from the shock of the oil embargo by OPEC countries, and developing clean energy sources was considered a way to promote energy independence.
Warnings about the effects of carbon dioxide on a warming climate were first published in 1938. The world, however, was preoccupied with the onset of war in Europe and the recovery from that war. No one had much time to worry about some melting snow or hot summer days. By the 1970s, however, those voices grew louder, the warnings more articulate, and the long-term effects more discernibly catastrophic. Jimmy Carter heard those warnings, and in the ethos of the two Democratic presidents who preceded him, Kennedy and Johnson, Carter articulated his belief in American exceptionalism by putting solar panels on the roof of the White House.
His message to the world was that the United States would use its engineering, scientific brilliance, and commercial and marketing expertise to lead the world to the widespread acceptance of renewable energy and away from the dirty energy that was slowly choking the Earth of life. The leader of the “free world” was taking yet another responsibility onto its shoulders. In the way, it spared Western Europe the nightmare of Soviet occupation, Jimmy Carter was determined to devote the United States to its next mission: Create a clean-energy infrastructure that would prevent the onset of climate change.
There was one problem in 1979, though, that prevented Americans from accepting this long-term view. It is a problem from which we in 2024 also suffered. Americans don’t want to pay a lot for the boatloads of stuff they consume daily. Low prices are more important to Americans than the effects of, say, climate change or fascism. High prices turn Americans into Zen Buddhists. Obsessed with the “now,” they lose sight of the consequences of bad policies or politicians tomorrow.
In 1979, inflation was 11.9 percent. The economy was still reeling from a combination of the Vietnam War and the oil embargo, and Americans needed some feel-good therapy. Jimmy Carter was elected to the presidency because Americans wanted an escape pod from the “status quo,” which resulted in the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter’s toothy smile and small-town Southern hospitality were meant to be a respite for a humbled American nation and maybe even a new way.
Fifteen years later, the next Democratic president morosely said “all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” which included the “worship” of the “consumption” of those marvelous products.
The 1970s were a decade of self-absorption in the name of “self-actualization,” and of apocalyptic forebodings, such as those of Paul Ehrlich, the environmental hysteric who suggested that Americans should delay mass starvation by killing their pets. So, in July 1979, in one of the weirder episodes in presidential history, Carter went to Camp David, to which he invited more than 100 liberal savants. There he brooded about Americans’ failings, then delivered a nationally televised speech in which he diagnosed Americans’ “crisis of confidence” and “self-indulgence,” and announced an insight: “We’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning (The President Who Made Reagan Necessary).”
Americans wanted to return to their core values of endless, mindless consumption, and Jimmy Carter told them that that instinct was incorrect. Jimmy Carter told the fish that water was bad for them, and the fish rejected that idea. When the notion of combating an unknown, unseen climate tragedy was set in the context of less consumption, Ronald Reagan and his scrum of clueless economists, whose core beliefs were that less taxes and more consumption would make America robust and vibrant, turned Carter’s message into something almost as dark and sinister as international communism.
From the vantage point of 2024, Jimmy Carter was more right on how to solve what ailed — and what would ail — America than 99 percent of people give him credit for. Observant students of history, who will pore for hours over the pieces of the great American jigsaw puzzle, can see the clues. It’s easier, though, to call Carter a lousy president because the rejected remedies for America in 1979 are still in many ways remedies for a sick, and failing America in 2024.
Jimmy Carter’s most significant weakness was not his inability to communicate complex problems but rather his belief that Americans were smart enough, adult enough to hear him and act responsibly. Jimmy Carter was on the outermost edge of the “greatest generation.” He was a student at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis from 1943 to 1946. Carter believed that if he leveled with Americans and told the truth, they would rise to the occasion and follow his lead. Unfortunately, the virus that would eventually grow Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” then the “Tea Party,” and finally “MAGA,” had invaded the body of the nation. Americans resoundingly reject Jimmy Carter’s medicine.
Today, we are more self-fish and more destructive than we have been at any time in our nation’s history. I know we have had some rough patches in our history, but the fact that we continue to reject that a climate Armageddon of our making will, in due time, make life for humans on this planet impossible is not just criminal but a form of genocide.
We have it in our national fiber to stop climate change. Jimmy Carter believed in us, but Ronald Reagan, the man who launched us on our current path, decided we weren’t smart or exceptional enough to lead the world to a better place. He reached into the silk hat of stupid and pulled out a bunch of pretty phrases like “The shining city on the hill,” and consumption-obsessed Americans melted.
When Jimmy Carter spoke the truth about our “national malaise,” Americans cringed and ran from him.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered the removal of the solar panels from the White House roof. They were an unsightly reminder to Big Oil that their greed was killing the Earth.
Imagine if Reagan had followed Carter’s lead and made it an American mission on par with sending a man to the moon. We could have prevented climate change. Reagan somehow understood the problem with the hole in the ozone layer and took action. The dirty energy lobby, however, was too much of a friend to Reagan and too many politicians in Washington.
Many Americans still regard Reagan’s “Government is the problem” speech as one of the best in our history. I am of the school that says Carter’s July 15th, 1979, “Malaise” speech is one of the best — and most honest.