Analysis essay concepts and applications

¶ … Speech

President Jimmy Carter was a fundamental part of a serious crisis in the U.S. That crisis revolved around excessive price increases and embargoes on imported oil, during a time when foreign oil imports were increasing exponentially and outstripping the trade balance that had existed for the U.S. For many years prior to Carter's election. This work will analyze and argue that Carter's message was truthful and fundamental and is timely even today, despite the fact that his words have largely been ignored and the scope of the problem of dependency on foreign oil has continued to grow, every year since 1977. Carter's message is a success because it is both truthful and timely and because it takes risk with regard to the outcome for his own political career.

The initial emphasis of the speech was to inform the public regarding his newly developed Department of Energy and to report to the public on the progress that congress has made with regard to policy development on the energy issue. Carter then moves on to connect the pieces of the puzzle by reiterating to the public that considerable sacrifices will have to be made at the very lowest level, which mainly includes everyday energy consumers if any real change will come from policy. Carter then moves on to attempt to explain why consumers must make sacrifices and take the energy issue seriously to help resolve the problem. He discusses the trade deficit and reiterates the fact that even though the U.S. is the largest agricultural exporter in the world those exports are half the amount of the imports of foreign oil. He states that there are significant business, economic and security losses imbedded in the energy question and that the U.S. consumer must respond to this problem with sacrifice and wisdom rather than by assuming that the government is in control and can fully change the situation to make it better in the future.

The text succeeds in that it clearly connects the problem of dependency on foreign oil with the real lived experience of the average American family in the U.S. It also does not inform the public, which has been the habit of previous administrations that the government will be able to take care of it just by tracking and writing and implementing policy on the issue. American consumers are informed of connectivity between the issue of foreign dependency on oil with regard to how such dependency leaves the U.S. vulnerable to outside forces manipulating the U.S. economy.

Carter's message is a long list of timely truths, regardless of the reception they created. In fact Carter can be seen as one of the first national politicians who adequately and correctly progressed the message that the consumer is ultimately the source of needed change and that the government can only help by guiding progress. Though he is not the first to tell people they will need to make sacrifices he was one of the first who demonstrated his own limitations and the limits of the actions of the government without the full investment and wise actions of American consumers.

This thesis did not win him any favors, he was not elected for a second term, as to the credit of most consumers even today it is easier to look toward the government for failures of change than to look to themselves and see how their own actions have supported and furthered problems in the economy or elsewhere. To his credit he was honest to a fault, rather than making campaign promises during his term of office as many others do. His wisdom has been a model for later officials and the public has responded to them in the same manner, by continuing to believe that others are responsible and voting them out of office. Personal accountability is only now becoming something that individuals are willing to consider, though it remains to be seen if such accountability will help resolve the serious problems we face as a nation, energy being only one of many.