In the whole history of American politics, there had never been anything quite like it. As theater, it offered mystery, an aura of crisis, a high moral purpose and a dash of comedy. For six days an eclectic representation of the American Establishment—Governors, Cabinet members, bankers, insurance executives, professors of sociology, obscure local politicians and even a Greek Orthodox archbishop—gathered in groups in Washington. Marine helicopters ferried them to the mountaintop presidential retreat at Camp David. There Jimmy Carter, outfitted sometimes in blue jeans, at other times in snappy sport coats, pressed them for their ideas about energy, the economy, his own Administration, the national mood—and himself. Toward week's end, while aides were drafting the Sunday-night TV speech that he hoped would rally the nation, the President lent confusion to the proceedings by twice vanishing from his mountain by helicopter to confer with ordinary citizens. Thursday night he descended on the Carnegie, Pa., home of Machinist William Fisher and his wife Bette, and sipped lemonade with their friends on the back porch for 90 minutes. Friday morning he swooped into Martinsburg, W. Va., where he called on Marvin Porterfield, a retired Marine major and disabled veteran of World War II, his wife Ginny and 17 friends and neighbors.
Carter's declared purpose was to renew his contact with the American people, to discover their anxieties and to reassure them of the concern of their chosen leaders. "There has been a lost sense of trust," he told aides, "a loss of confidence in the future." Part of that concern, he inevitably learned, involved the President himself. For some time past, but more sharply this summer, the U.S. has been slipping into a morass of interrelated problems. One is the energy crisis, marked by its gas lines and soaring prices. One is the painful combination of inflation and economic stagnation. One is the widespread perception that Jimmy Carter has seemed unable to make a strong attack on either of the first two.
While the President was at Camp David, his economic advisers made it official: the U.S. is in an inflationary recession. National output, they predicted, will shrink 0.5% this year; prices nonetheless will climb 10.6%, and the number of jobless may grow by 1.3 million, to around 7 million late next year. The inflation is being fanned and the recession worsened by large OPEC oil price boosts that underscore the debilitating U.S. dependence on imported petroleum. Carter was earnestly aware, if the people of the U.S. were not yet, that the nation must find some way to start breaking that dependence if it is to have any chance for longterm, noninflationary economic growth.