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Carter was serious, however, and surprisingly candid about his perception of the national mood. To one group he described it as a "malaise" of confusion, pessimism and distrust that had roots much deeper than gasoline lines or double-digit inflation. It began, he said, with the assassination of President Kennedy, deepened through Viet Nam and Watergate, and now caused Americans to distrust all institutions and leaders. He voiced deep distress about a poll that, he said, showed most Americans expecting less prosperous lives for their children than for themselves. (The reference was apparently to a Caddell poll done privately for the White House.) To a group of labor leaders and civic and government officials, Carter implied that the nation is in a moral decline. He lamented the numbers of unmarried people living together, and said he and Rosalynn rarely let Amy watch new movies because they are filled with four-letter words.
The President himself frequently brought up the widespread feeling that he must bear some of the blame for the national malaise, and even conceded that there might be something to it. Perhaps, he mused, he had unwittingly become too much a "head of Government" immersed in policy minutiae, too little a leader charting new directions. The President acknowledged that his steadily declining ratings in the opinion polls had persuaded him that he needed to take a new approach. He had been "pretty severely compromised," he said, and "one of the compromises that comes from a low standing in the polls is that people don't pay any attention to you, and the Congress doesn't pay any attention to you, and the Governors don't pay any attention to you."
Now the gas lines and economic whirlwinds have made Congress and the country receptive to a new beginning, but what should it be, where should he turn? He urged the guests to say whatever they thought, and not to spare him or his staff in their criticisms. At one evening session the staff even left the room, at the suggestion of Jordan, so that the discussion could be more uninhibited. Jordan at one joint "got torn apart," said one participant. Once opening remarks to each group were over, Carter listened far more han he talked.
The guests voiced comments ranging from the quite specific to the very general. Governor Hugh Carey of New York complained that heating oil was not getting through from refineries to jobbers in his state. Carter promised to look into the situation. Economist Walter Heller suggested a $25 billion tax cut, which he said would not be inflationary because it would only replace "the dollars OPEC is picking from our pockets." Carter did not commit himself, but there seemed to be a general sense that October would be soon enough to consider a tax cut.