Borrowing from Carter

I just happened upon the text of President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" [actually, the "crisis of confidence"] speech from 1979 when he counseled Americans to adopt their own energy policy along the lines of the once-and-again fashionable "put on a sweater and sit at home in the dark" variety.  No talk about curly lightbulbs, though.

He did set forth the "goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade" and "To give us energy security…the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun." It really is time we began investing in those things, you know.

He also opened with what would become a familiar, signature refrain from a new kind of Democrat a decade-and-a-half later:

"I promised you a president who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain…"

Now, about those complaints that Obama lifts riffs from other peoples' speeches…