○  energy and the national goals - a crisis of confidence  ○

re 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 watergate.

we remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. we believed that our nation’s resources 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 it, 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

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