Reagan and Carter were radically different.

Dang you EO, I was going to say that. However OJ your point is valid. (Just one quibble about Kerry's supposed protectionism, which I don't take seriously)

Is there anything about Kerry to be taken seriously ? Except for the fact that he will be the Clown-in-Chief on January 20, 2005, which is seriously disturbing.

Carter had already begun the Defense build-up and was fretting about the decline in American morality (malaise). The tax cuts were the only big difference.

OT - But CNN is just reporting the Iraqi Shiite cleric saying that 9/11 was a "Gift from God", but not in the good way as in "it was a gift that allowed us to be free, etc."

So we really are on Internet time. It used to take 30 years for a people made free by the blood of Americans to start using that freedom to hold us in contempt. Now it's down to just under a year. That's progress.

I tell ya, isolationism is coming, whether we want it to or not. Americans will always live free or die. Most others on this planet will not.

And there's nothing we can do to make them.

He's right.

If Carter had been elected. Sandinistas would still be in Nicaragua, Pershings would have never been Germany and if he had been in slightly longer he would have seen fit to subsidize the Soviet Union so as to buy "peace" like he desparately wanted to do in North Korea.

I took his malaise speech as an effort to chastize complaining citizens regarding his stupid continuation of price controls on domesticatly produced Oil which was causing gas lines and rationing. Nice of you to tell me it was because he thought we were immoral.

Andrew indicates that the Mullah was saying we deserved 9/11 because we mistreated muslims or are infidels. So perhaps you could explain how you would interpret it differently, not the concept of "gift from God", but the reason God decided to give us this gift.

h:

He'd been humiliated quite badly by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was in the process of changing his policy.

Here's the pertinent section of the malaise speech, which Reagan could have given:

I know, of course, being President, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That's why I've worked hard to put my campaign promises into law -- and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

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 5 years will be worse than the past 5 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 Water gate.

We remember when the phrase "sound as a dollar" was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation's re sources 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, and neither do I. What can we do?

First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this Nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans.

One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: "We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."

We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world.

We ourselves and the same Americans who just 10 years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

OJ
Good speech and it could be given Reagan as you say.
But context is significant. 10% inflation, gas lines, unemployment approaching 10%. In context calls for sacrifice to continue his policies was not an effort to address morality.

Morality is personal sacrifice for the greater good. The real problem is that he'd become a laughingstock by then. But his politics had converged with Reagan's for the most part.

Peter:

Buck up, me hearty.

You're too pessimistic by half, which leads you to make some serious mistakes in analyzing the Presidential race.

The 'malaise' speech was given in mid-1979, as I remember, and was spoken as though read out loud by a drone. One wondered if he really believed any of it.

Carter turned bitter when Kennedy ran against him, and continued in that vein towards Reagan. He lost because he was a petty man who did not know that he was not fit for the job.

If the spring of 1961 saw a snap-crackling change in Washington, the spring of 1981 was no less, save that the country was about to go into a deep recession to pay for the avoidance of problems since the mid-1960s. By late 1983, everything was different, with the exception of the beginnings of real problems in the Middle East (which Carter would have probably muddled up even more than Reagan did - given Carter's issues with Iran, he probably would have invited Saddam to the White House).

As EO said, radically different.

jim:

Of course JFK just continued Ike's policies also.

That's true, but the Kennedys had so much more pep about them, eh? Isn't that what counted?

Although Eisenhower would have torn down the Wall.

But not more than Nixon.