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But regardless of how the most important speech of his presidency is ultimately assessed, Carter did take an inspirational step with his Camp David summit. True, not everybody came away from it inspired. Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and one of Carter's earliest labor supporters in 1976, returned grumbling that unionists might consider voting for a Republican in 1980. But the reaction of Connecticut Governor Grasso was more typical: she found Carter "upbeat and confident, just terribly impressive." At the minimum, most of the summit visitors were persuaded to give Carter the benefit of the doubt for a few days, as he struggled to devise a program and a way to sell it.
One problem at least the Presiden had surely solved as he prepared to go before the TV cameras. At Camp David he complained that he had been losing his audience. Some 80 million people had watched his first fireside chat on energy in 1977, he recalled, but only 30 million had tuned in for his fourth, last April That was scarcely the trouble Sunday night. However unorthodox his method Carter had seized the nation's attention He and his aides knew he had taken a gigantic gamble. If he failed to capitalize on this chance to assert his leadership, he would not get many more.