Forty years ago today, Jimmy Carter gave one of the worst speeches in American presidential history. Reading it again, I am surprised to see that the notorious “malaise” speech is even worse than I remember.

It was Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, not Carter himself, who used the word “malaise” to describe the supposed problem on which Carter focused in his speech. The official title of the speech, “Crisis of Confidence,” was bad. Still worse was the way Carter described America and the government-centric solutions he offered for the nation’s alleged ills.