[...] Part of Fogle's narrative occurs in 1977, and here Wallace plays one last time with presidential rhetoric on commonwealth themes. In one scene, Fogle's father returns home unexpectedly to find his son and friends stoned and with the heat turned up, creating another hothouse, perverting the oikos and hoarding the general benefit. Fogle scrambles "to turn the thermostat back down to sixty-eight," feeling "like a spoiled little selfish child" (PK 173). The reference is to the "energy conservation" (PK 172) policies of not just Fogle's father—who Wallace of course notes "grew up during the Depression" (PK 169)—but the United States as a whole. In one of the most enduring memes associated with his presidency (and with 1977 in particular), Jimmy Carter gave his "sweater speech" on February 2, 1977, shortly after his inauguration. In it he called for "cooperation," "mutual effort," and "modest sacrifices" from the American people, who by keeping thermostats at 65 in the daytime and 55 at night could "save half the current shortage of natural gas." The nationally televised speech (a latter-day version of FDR's fireside chats, in spirit and setting, with Carter appearing next to a roaring fire) is remembered for the president's sartorial choice: he wore a cardigan, implying it was the clothing of civic caring (especially for those without big fireplaces?). Appropriately, Fogle at the beginning of his memoir vaguely recalls "Jimmy Carter addressing the nation in a cardigan," a memory that slides in the same sentence into apathetic gossip about Carter's brother (PK 166). In a finished Pale King, revisiting 1970s energy politics might have developed into a captivating dialogue with the Iraq War, tense U.S./Middle East relations, and climate-change denial amid which Wallace worked on the novel—which Pietsch says "came alive" again for him in spring of 2005, the period of the "Author's Foreword" and a time with no shortage of chicanery from "the Decider" and his cabinet in the news. With Spackman's changes proving "attractive[] ... to the free-market conservatives of the current administration" looking to "deregulate" the IRS like any other business, Wallace may associate sweater-clad Carter with a last gasp of commonwealth values before neoliberalism took command (PK 115).