As the sun set on a hot, summer day in July 1979, it also seemed to be setting on America's expanding fortunes…

The last twenty years had been a time of enormous change for the U.S., and not all of it could be described as good. America was going through her adolescence and puberty, it seems, would not be kind to her. Zits appeared, and then blackheads, and then strange smells and odd patches of hair and a whole bunch of other growing pains which began to mar America's seemingly perfect complexion.

Over the 1960s, confidence in the stability and tranquility of the domestic landscape had been rattled by the successive assassinations of prominent political and civil-rights leaders, beginning with John F. Kennedy in November of 1963, of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of 1968, and of Robert Kennedy just a few short months later in June of that same year.

Things abroad hadn't gone according to plain either.

Americans had always prided themselves on having the best military in the world. We were undefeated, after all. We were back-to-back world war champs, considered the world's great superpower, locked and loaded with nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs, and other tools of butt-kicking destruction.

Then came Vietnam, with its mounting casualties and uncertain moral purpose. Not only did we fail to achieve victory in the conflict, but we were also forced to look in the mirror and ask ourselves a scary question: were we still the good guys?

But hey, at least we had the presidency, that fancy-schmancy office at which such legends as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had once served. Right?

Um…

Enter: Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970s. The President had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or more accurately, his hand in the private business of the rival Democratic Party. He had actually resigned; he had quit being the President to avoid impeachment. Suddenly, this once exalted office didn't seem so lofty anymore. (Source)

So Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, assumed leadership over a country which, like a pimpled teenager moments before a big date, was feeling very insecure about itself.

A few months before that hot July evening in which Carter would deliver the "Crisis of Confidence" speech, OPEC had announced another in a seemingly endless series of price increases on oil. Rising gasoline prices contributed to a stagnating economy, rising inflation and growing unemployment. America was hurting in a way that it hadn't felt since the Great Depression.

Only this time, we didn't have the confidence in the Presidency that we had enjoyed during the 1930s. This time, we didn't have faith that things would improve like we had so firmly believed before.

This time felt different, and the American people looked to President Carter for guidance as to what to do next.