Carter’s big speech had an assist from a NACo president

Key Takeaways

President Jimmy Carter injected a little levity into the crowd at NACo’s 1979 Annual Conference.

“You may have heard that I spoke to the nation last night on television,” he said to laughter from the crowd in Jackson County, Mo.

They had heard. All of America heard. Carter tried to articulate the mood that had permeated the nation’s zeitgeist in what became known as his “Crisis of Confidence” speech, or the “malaise speech.” 

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Read Carter's address to the 1979 NACo Annual Conference attendees

In the days following Carter’s death at 100 on Dec. 29, 2024, that speech remains a prominent part of a long and accomplished biography that more than once intersected with county government. 

In 1979, after delaying a July 4 speech, when he planned to address the country’s energy crisis, Carter pivoted and widened his scope. Holed up at Camp David, he summoned citizens from around the country to gather their input, and one of those leaders was Charlotte Williams, a Genesee County, Mich. commissioner and NACo’s president. 

As Kevin Mattson writes in “What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?” the speech had an immediate payoff — an 11-point increase in his approval rating — though it did not do enough to prevent a reelection loss a year later.

“It was, in fact, a good speech — brave, original and pertinent to the moment,” Peggy Noonan, a Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote in 2023. She had earlier served as primary speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. 

 “It was remarkable to hear an American president critique himself in this way, through the words of others,” Noonan wrote. “Mr. Carter had captured some hard truths about his era and put them forth in a daring way.” 

Williams died in 2017 and her youngest daughter, Cathryn Williams Sanders, was not privy to any details of what her mother contributed to the speech, but Sanders said Carter was a memorable figure in her mother’s life, along with the whole Williams family.

“She introduced him on national television, and it was incredible for our family,” Sanders said. “We were treated like the first family of NACo, the Secret Service ushered us through the halls of the Omni Hotel.”

Carter invited Williams and her daughter to the White House during Pope John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Washington, D.C., where they received a papal blessing. 

Former NACo President Larry Johnson, while still relatively new to Georgia in the early 1990s, worked for Carter and his wife Rosalyn in Carter’s organization, the Atlanta Project. 

Carter sought to capitalize on enthusiasm for the 1996 Summer Olympics to spur investment in economically depressed parts of Atlanta. 

“They were just amazing,” Johnson recalled. 

“We had a former president who cared enough about local communities to do that work. I mean, he’s a national figure. All the things he’s done, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, eradicating the Guinea worm disease, founding the Carter Center, but with all of that going on, he still wanted to focus on neighborhood initiatives and try to improve neighborhoods. It was phenomenal, and I’m glad I had a chance to be part of it.”

In 1973, the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia broke from their tradition of choosing a county official as ACCG Man of the Year and recognized then-Governor Carter and members of the General Assembly for their efforts toward property tax reform, which included a $50 million homestead exemption, though that was just for one year. 

ACCG Deputy Director Clint Mueller said Carter invited input from county commissioners in 1971 for an organization and management improvement study looking at how to make state government more efficient, “to help the state determine where there were weaknesses and strengths in state government,” Mueller explained. 

That focus on efficient government drove Carter to standardize budgeting and auditing processes in Georgia.

 “We have a budget law about how counties and cities go about adopting their budgets and they’re required now to have an outside auditor come in once a year and do an audit of their financial statements,” Mueller said. 

“All that started because Jimmy Carter wanted professionalism in management, even in local government.”