The Energy Crisis

Crouse, Eric R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_8

Eric R. Crouse²

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Abstract

This chapter explores the issue that Jimmy Carter described as America’s greatest challenge—“the moral equivalent of war.” He consulted with bureaucrats, labor leaders, environmentalists, “obsolete Keynesian economists,” and preachers, but not oil producers. It presents many stories of the energy crisis, including those of ordinary Americans who were unhappy about lowering their thermostats and waiting in long lines for gasoline. The chapter’s content points to Carter’s “malaise” speech of 1979 as part of the reason for the shifting of Americans’ politics in a conservative direction.

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Notes

1.
Kevin Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?”: Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise,” and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 1–2, 4, 6.
2.
He made this prediction in 1978; see Robert Lekachman, “Distribution Wars,” New Republic, July 29, 15.
3.
Milton Friedman, “What Carter Should Do,” Newsweek, June 18, 1979, 66.
4.
Milton Friedman, “Three Mini-Columns,” Newsweek, June 12, 1978, 88.
5.
Burton I. Kaufmann and Scott Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr. Second Edition, Revised (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 168.
6.
W. Carl Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy: Policy in an Age of Limits (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 165.
7.
See the recent study, Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s (New York: Hill and Wang, 2017).
8.
Milton Friedman, “Rising above Principle,” Newsweek, January 19, 1976, 68.
9.
Friedman, “What Carter Should Do,” 66. Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 163.
10.
William E. Simon, A Time for Truth (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1978), 79–81.
11.
Ibid., 75–76, 82.
12.
Ibid., 74, 81.
13.
Milton Friedman, “Two Economic Fallacies,” Newsweek, May 12, 1975, 83.
14.
Alan Reynolds, “The Federal Energy Agencies: The Solution or the Problem?” Imprimis, 5, no. 9 (1976): 1.
15.
Ibid., 2.
16.
Ibid., 3.
17.
Ibid.
18.
Ibid., 5.
19.
Ibid., 6. Also, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press, 1992), 660.
20.
Marilu Hunt McCarty, “Economic Aspects of the Carter Energy Program,” in The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter, 556, 559.
21.
Jude Wanniski, The Way the World Works, Fourth Edition (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998), 307.
22.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 157.
23.
Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964–1980 (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 521.
24.
“The Deep Freeze!” Newsweek, January 31, 1977, 34, 37.
25.
“Now, the Gas Crisis,” Newsweek, February 7, 1977, 14–15.
26.
“Guntersville, ALA—Life Below Zero,” Newsweek, February 14, 1977, 26.
27.
Simon, A Time for Truth, 81–82.
28.
Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 94.
29.
Ibid., 94, 96, 98–99.
30.
Tip O’Neill with William Novak, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill (New York: Random House, 1987), 319. O’Neill wrote that the one log burning was “a preposterous sight” for a New Englander.
31.
Ibid., 320.
32.
Russell D. Motter, “Seeking Limits: The Passage of the National Energy Act as a Microcosm of the Carter Presidency,” in The Presidency and Domestic Policies of Jimmy Carter, 575.
33.
Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Berkley Books, 1980), 129, 133.
34.
Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 71.
35.
Eliot Marshall, “James Schlesinger—Back Again,” New Republic, January 29, 1977, 15.
36.
“Reserves: The New Math,” Newsweek, June 27, 1977, 71.
37.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 92.
38.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 157. Yergin, The Prize, 661–663. It took until November 1978 before Congress passed an energy bill.
39.
O’Neill, Man of the House, 320. Yergin, The Prize, 662–663.
40.
Yergin, The Prize, 663.
41.
Hayward, The Age of Reagan, 522.
42.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 91–93.
43.
James Nathan Miller, “They’re Giving Us Gas, All Right,” New Republic, February 12, 1977, 15.
44.
Milton Friedman, “Gas Crisis: Weather or Washington?,” Newsweek, February 28, 1977, 69.
45.
Milton Friedman, “A Department of Energy?,” Newsweek, May 23, 1977, 62.
46.
Milton Friedman, “Energy Rhetoric,” Newsweek, June 13, 1977, 82.
47.
George F. Will, “Cold Comfort,” Newsweek, February 7, 80.
48.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 38–39.
49.
Ibid., 70–71, 85.
50.
Milton Friedman, “A Monstrosity,” Newsweek, May 2, 1977, 20.
51.
Milton Friedman, “To Jimmy from James,” Newsweek, October 17, 1977, 99.
52.
Milton Friedman, “What Belongs to Whom?,” Newsweek, March 13, 1978, 71.
53.
Michael Camp, “Carter’s Energy Insecurity: The Political Economy of Coal in the 1970s,” The Journal of Policy History, 26, no. 4 (2004): 461.
54.
Ibid., 462.
55.
Ibid., 463, 465.
56.
Ibid., 464, 467–468.
57.
Ibid., 470.
58.
Ibid., 471–472.
59.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 98.
60.
For example, “Business and the Rational Mind, Part II,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1978, 25.
61.
Robert Sherrill, “Mobil News That’s Fit to Print,” Nation, January 27, 1979, 3, 71.
62.
The early battles of government hearings took place in 1974, the year Senator Henry Jackson coined the phrase “obscene profits.” See Yergin, The Prize, 656–657. Most Americans believed Big Oil “created an artificial shortage.” See Jacobs, Panic at the Pump, 5, 44.
63.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 170.
64.
Yergin, The Prize, 658–659.
65.
Fred J. Cook, “How Big Oil Turned Off the Gas,” Nation, July 28–August 4, 1979, 65. Fred J. Cook, “Heating Oil Goes Through the Roof,” Nation, October 20, 1979, 369–372.
66.
TRB, “Why Mobil Isn’t Loved,” New Republic, October 14, 1978, 3.
67.
Henry Fairlie, “The Passionate Socialist,” New Republic, March 26, 1977, 19.
68.
Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Carter Presidency: Fourteen Intimate Perspectives of Jimmy Carter (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1990), 57.
69.
Ibid., 63–64.
70.
Paul A. Samuelson, “Year-end Questions,” Newsweek, January 1, 1979, 45.
71.
McCarty, “Economic Aspects of the Carter Energy Program,” 565.
72.
Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 305.
73.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 172.
74.
Yergin, The Prize, 693.
75.
Thompson, ed., The Carter Presidency, 90.
76.
Wanniski, The Way the World Works, 222, 307, 315. Also, see Brian Domitrovic, Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009), 33.
77.
Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 172.
78.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 173.
79.
Ibid., 174,
80.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 176.
81.
Ibid, 177.
82.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., 171.
83.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 303–304n54.
84.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 111.
85.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 172.
86.
Hayward, The Age of Reagan, 572.
87.
Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 110–111.
88.
Ibid., 113–117.
89.
Ibid., 117–119.
90.
Daniel Bell, a close friend of Irving Kristol, “had an immense intellectual curiosity” and probably understood economics better than most in his social-democratic circle. See Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1999), 476.
91.
Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 89–94, 98.
92.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 183.
93.
Ibid., 173.
94.
Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 130–134.
95.
Carter, White House Diary, 342–343.
96.
Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 141, 143, 147.
97.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 114–115, 118, 120–121. Warned that there would be a media backlash to his speech, Carter responded: “F*%* the press.” Randall Balmer, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 114–115. Carter apparently said the same about Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post. See Ben Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 426.
98.
Thompson, ed., The Carter Presidency, 7–8.
99.
Quoted in Mattson, “What the Heck Are You Up to Mr. President?,” 167.
100.
O’Neill, Man of the House, 318. Joseph Califano wrote: “After the speech, Carter walked through the room briefly. On cue, we all rose and applauded as he entered, more out of hope than conviction.” See Joseph A. Califano Jr., Governing America: An Insider’s Report from the White House and the Cabinet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 428.
101.
Jeffrey Hart, The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2007), 259.
102.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr., 179.
103.
O’Neill, Man of the House, 318.
104.
Califano, Governing America, 431.
105.
Ibid., 435, 438–439, 444. Bob Woodward, Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 86–87.
106.
Dilys M. Hill, “Domestic Policy,” in The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making, eds. M. Glenn Abernathy et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984): 18.
107.
Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., 180–181.
108.
Ibid., 184.
109.
Milton Friedman, “Blaming the Obstetrician,” Newsweek, June 4, 1979, 70.
110.
Friedman, “What Carter Should Do,” 66.
111.
Friedman cites the July 16 editorial in Milton Friedman, “The Energy Boondoggle,” Newsweek, July 30, 1979, 56.
112.
Milton Friedman, “Iran and Energy Policy,” Newsweek, December 31, 1979, 61.
113.
Milton Friedman, “Our New Hidden Taxes,” Newsweek, April 14, 1980, 90.
114.
Craig Shirley, Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years, 1976–1980 (New York: Broadside Books, 2017), 147.
115.
Kiron Skinner et al., eds. Reagan in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (New York: Touchstone, 2002), 321.
116.
Ibid., 322–323.
117.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Can We Control Our World?,” Newsweek, November 19, 1979, 136.
118.
“Energy Politics,” New Republic, July 7 and 14, 1979; TRB, “The Fed Needs Help,” New Republic, October 20, 1979, 6.
119.
Hayward, The Age of Reagan, 579.
120.
Quoted in Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy, 1
121.
Although not focusing on economic theory, Meg Jacobs argues that “the energy crisis ultimately helped shift American politics to the right in the 1970s and bring an end to [John Kenneth] Galbraith’s conception of the American system.” See Jacobs, Panic at the Pump, 6–7.
122.
Carter, Keeping Faith, 91.
123.
Jude Wanniski, “Oil in Abundance,” Harper’s, October 1979, 26.

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Tyndale University College, Toronto, ON, Canada
Eric R. Crouse

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Crouse, E.R. (2018). The Energy Crisis. In: America's Failing Economy and the Rise of Ronald Reagan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70545-3_8
Published: 14 February 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70544-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70545-3
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