Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  As Coolidge edged higher on the political ladder in Massachusetts, he made the proper contacts, won over the right sponsors, and learned swiftly and well the ways to please the powerful and retain the confidence of the electorate. He was an acclaimed politician, which is to say he was aware of the needs of constituents and of the consequences of his actions. Coolidge appealed not only to Republicans but also to voters who considered themselves Democrats. Three-quarters of a century before there were Reagan Democrats, there were Coolidge Democrats. His was hardly the record of a person who did not understand politics. One might easily argue that he was one of the most experienced and successful politicians ever to become president.

  Coolidge was more loquacious than he is credited with being, and preferred short, simple, declarative sentences. A statistician with time on his hands once computed that Coolidge’s sentences averaged 18 words, compared to Lincoln’s 26.6, Wilson’s 31.8, and Theodore Roosevelt’s 41. This is a testament to Coolidge’s ability to be concise.

  Much (but certainly not all) of Coolidge’s nonofficial prose is a pleasure to read. H.L. Mencken, who was scathing in his characterization of most politicians’ writings, said of Coolidge, “He has a natural talent for the incomparable English language,” which was high praise indeed from the author of The American Language. Yet Heywood Broun, who was not a Coolidge admirer, called his writings and use of the language “one hundred percent wooden,” which was a common belief at the time. “He seems to me the least gifted author the White House has known in many generations.”

  How may one explain this sharp difference of opinion between two perceptive writers? One reason is that most presidents make so many speeches and do so much writing that one can find felicitous phrases amid dull stretches. After all, not all of Lincoln’s state papers come up to the level of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address, and this holds true for Coolidge. Throughout this book are scores of Coolidge quotes, and the reader can decide for himself or herself. Take this one, for starters:No man was ever meanly born. About his cradle is the wondrous miracle of life. He may descend into the depths, he may live in infamy and perish miserably, but he is born great. Men build monuments above the graves of their heroes to mark the end of a great life, but women seek out the birthplace and build their shrine, not where a great life had its end but where it had its beginning, seeking with a truer instinct not the common source of things in that which is gone forever but in that which they know will again be manifest. Life may depart, but the source of life is constant.

  Coolidge isn’t very attractive to a generation raised on the constant din of motion pictures, stereos, and especially radio and TV. To them he must appear exotic, and a good deal of this can be ascribed to his upbringing compared to that of today’s Americans. He was reared in an area barely reached by the railroad. His youth was relatively untouched by the “modern.” His home didn’t have indoor plumbing, electricity, or a telephone. Yet Coolidge had intellectual interests, and came alive in philosophy classes at Amherst. He was an avid reader, and some of his speeches are peppered with classical references. When he left for his honeymoon, he was in the midst of translating Dante’s Inferno into English. After his death his wife wrote that he had a small, select library. Among his books were “his Bible, the Life and Letters of Charles E. Garman, the Amherst professor whose influence upon his students was so marked, and Paradise Lost in two paper-covered volumes. These two small books he frequently carried with him when traveling.” But he didn’t care to have this known. Those who think he was humorless will be surprised to learn that he was selected by his graduating class to deliver the Grove Oration, which by tradition had to be amusing.

  His was a style that takes some getting used to by today’s public, which hears empty promises from politicians, not straightforward prose. Not only would Coolidge have nothing to do with negative campaigning, but he refused even to utter the name of his opponents. The thought of Coolidge philandering, keeping an enemies list, lying, or flip-flopping on the issues would have amazed even his political enemies. The sleaze that characterizes much of American political life today, in both parties, was absent in his administration. Whatever one thinks of Coolidge, the possibility that he would sell access to the Lincoln bedroom or divert public funds for private uses, two of the many stories that bedevil politicians today, would have been dismissed out of hand. In 1920, when he was mentioned for the presidential nomination, one reporter wrote of him, “You just have confidence in Coolidge. He may not do what you want him to, he may not do what you think he ought to do, but you know he’s done his best to do right.”

  Of all our presidents, Coolidge was the one who couldn’t care less what we thought of him—while taking pains to make sure his reputation was safeguarded. He wasn’t openly concerned much about the barbs thrown his way by intellectuals, who constantly belittled him. Once, an agitated Hoover asked whether he had seen influential columnist Frank Kent’s article about him in the American Mercury. Coolidge replied, “You mean that one in the magazine with the green cover? I started to read it, but it was against me, so I didn’t finish it.”

  Historian Robert Ferrell, one of the most astute president-observers of our time, remarked in 1996 that only three presidents in the twentieth century did not contract “Potomac Fever,” which is to say, become so enamored of high office as to be willing to sacrifice a great deal to obtain it. These, said Ferrell, were Truman, Harding, and Coolidge. Whether Coolidge really belongs in this short roster will be left for the reader to decide.

  Coolidge’s reputation underwent a renaissance of sorts among conservatives and moderates with the Reagan presidency, due in no small measure to Reagan himself, who admired Coolidge. Allowing for differences in time, place, and style, their ideas are similar. Consider a typical Coolidge statement on economics, from his 1920 inaugural address, following his reelection as governor:The resources with which to meet taxation are dangerously near the point of exhaustion. There is a limit to the taxing power of a State beyond which increased rates produce decreased revenues. If that be exceeded intangible securities and other personal property become driven out of its jurisdiction, industry cannot meet its less burdened competitors, and no capital will be found for enlarging old or starting new enterprises. Such a condition means first stagnation, then decay and dissolution. There is before us a danger that our resources may be taxed out of existence and our prosperity destroyed.

  Reagan spoke often of the need to return governmental functions to the states. So did Bush, and Clinton’s welfare program did just that. Here are Coolidge’s thoughts on the matter in 1926:While we ought to glory in the Union and remember that it is the source from which the States derive their chief title to fame, we must also recognize that the national administration is not and cannot be adjusted to the needs of local government. It is too far away to be informed of local needs, too inaccessible to be responsive to local needs.

  When he arrived in the White House, Reagan strolled into the Cabinet Room, where he saw portraits of Truman, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Knowing something about his new boss, White House curator Clement Conger remarked, “If you don’t like Mr. Truman, you can move Mr. Truman out.” So he did. Reagan ordered the Truman portrait down, and in its place came one of Coolidge. “It’s a new era,” Conger murmured.

  Even so, Reagan was no more a reincarnation of Coolidge than FDR was the second coming of Woodrow Wilson. The 1980s were so different from the 1920s, the problems the two men faced so disparate. In many ways, Coolidge was the last president of the nineteenth century. Reagan was the man who helped bring the twentieth century to its end with the conclusion of the Cold War.

  Coolidge also was the last president who believed in a passive executive branch in times of peace and prosperity. Of those who occupied the White House in the twentieth century, Coolidge was the most Jeffersonian in philosophy and practice—a judgment those who admire Jefferson but have not delved deeply into his writings may find astonishing.

>   The following pages represent an attempt to introduce or reintroduce Coolidge to those to whom he is a cartoon caricature and figure of derision. Coolidge scholars will find some fresh interpretations in these pages but no major revelations. Coolidge destroyed his private papers, and scholars have pored over the public ones, to the point that what remains to be learned is the filling in of minor portions of the man and his times. This book is not based on original research. Moreover, I do not intend to present a complete picture of the Coolidge presidency, and certainly not that of his era. Rather, this book is about a man I have found to be extraordinary in his simplicity and notable in his complexity, which is to say, an unusual human being who merits serious consideration.

  2

  Growing Up

  The town of Plymouth lies on the easterly slope of the Green Mountains, about twenty miles west of the Connecticut River and somewhat south of the central part of Vermont. This part of the state is made up of a series of narrow valleys and high hills, some of which rank as mountains that must reach an elevation of at least twenty-five hundred feet.

  The first paragraph in The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge

  MOST AMERICANS DURING the Coolidge era didn’t know much more about him when he left the White House in 1929 than they did when he arrived there in 1923. Careful readers of the press could learn about his youth, education, and legal career, how he rose in politics, about his family, the workings of his presidency, and his ideas as expressed in speeches and interviews. And at least a dozen biographies of Coolidge—all of them idolatrous—were written before and while he was in office. Virtually all Americans had heard Coolidge jokes. The vast majority of Americans also knew they liked him, and he was considered an able if not a great president. But they weren’t sure why and how they had come to this conclusion. Coolidge, to put it simply, was puzzling—which was the way he wanted it.

  Many remarked on the enigmatic nature of our thirtieth president, who rose to the highest office in the land without the familiar attributes of the successful politician. Writing of him at the time, journalist Sherwin Cook, who called Coolidge one of the “two great enigmas of the first third of the twentieth century” (the other being the popularity of the play “Abie’s Irish Rose”), commented:If before he had become prominent in the public eye, the portrait of a man with the attributes of Coolidge had been sketched to any political leader and that leader had been asked what such a man’s availability was, the answer would have invariably been, “A political impossibility.” Coolidge’s unimpressive physique, his reticence, his lack of florid speech, his utter want of social attributes, his entire aloofness, are proverbial. How could such a man ever been elected to a municipal council?

  Michael Hennessy, the dean of Boston journalists and a veteran “Coolidge watcher,” came to a similar conclusion:He was not a back-slapping politician and was woefully deficient in most of the arts of the office seeker, but people liked him because he kept his word and was scrupulously honest. He inherited from his Vermont ancestors their characteristics of plain living and high thinking, thrift, taciturnity, and humor. He was not a brilliant man, was sparing of his words, and had a mind of his own.

  Gamaliel Bradford, a prominent biographer of Coolidge’s era, agreed, adding:The truth is, it was not in his temperament to enjoy glory or anything else. That temperament was the inherited, cumulative, aggravated temperament of New England, in which the sense of duty is the overriding force, and an uneasy conscience suggests that we are not in this world mainly to have a good time, or even to have a good time at all, but for some higher purpose. Always there is that New England face, with all its subtle implications, and the face seems peculiarly out of keeping with merry-making or any of the riot of set publicity, most of all with the ludicrously inappropriate decorations which were resorted to in Coolidge’s Western surroundings. There is the garish cowboy rig, and in the midst of it the chilly Vermont countenance, wondering painfully and wearily what it was all about. Those people were not working: why should anybody want to do anything but work?

  Certainly Coolidge’s public performances—which is what they were, performances—were geared to create this image. But there was more than this to the man. He seemed aloof and even uncaring, but in reality Coolidge could be quite emotional about some subjects. Consider these words about the state in which he was born and raised:Vermont is my birthright. Here one gets close to nature, in the mountains, in the brooks, the waters of which hurry to the sea; in the lakes, shining like silver in their green setting; fields tilled, not by machinery, but by the brain and hand of man. My folks are happy and contented. They belong to themselves, live within their incomes, and fear no man.

  Vermont is a small state geographically and demographically. The 1870 census indicated it had a population of slightly more than 330,000, not much different from a quarter of a century earlier. The swelling ranks of immigrants to America—Irish and German in the 1840s and 1850s, eastern and southern European later in the century—barely touched the state. The tough and stubborn men and women remained there to eke out hard livings. The more easily discouraged and the more ambitious would stay a while, and then move on. It was not unusual to find a village in which practically all the inhabitants could trace their lineage there prior to the American Revolution. Writing of the pre–Civil War generation, Coolidge noted: They were some hardy self-contained people. Most of them are gone now and their old homesteads are reverting to the wilderness. They went forth to conquer where the trees were thicker, the fields larger, and the problems more difficult. I have seen their descendants scattered all over the country, especially in the middle west, and as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and westward to the Pacific slope.

  Vermont was a rural state when Calvin Coolidge was growing up. The rocky soil and harsh winters dictated small, subsistence farms and working the maple forests for sugar and syrup. There were some important extractive industries, especially limestone, marble, and granite, and some iron and quartz.

  Vermont was well forested, with maple, birch, and pines. Isolated from the transportation, communications, and industrial forces that were shaping other parts of the country after the Civil War, the state did not participate in the changes brought by iron, coal, and railroads, and even less by those wrought by petroleum and natural gas. Life was much slower in Montpelier, and certainly Plymouth Notch, than in Boston or New York. While there may have been drawbacks, there were also benefits. Or at least, so Coolidge believed toward the end of his life. Writing in 1932, he said:Experience was sufficiently meager so that it could be carefully considered and digested. Contemplation was possible. There was nothing to suggest to a boy that conditions would change violently. I never mistrusted that history was not all made, public questions about all decided, and the world—at least our part of it—was not destined to go on indefinitely as it was then going. Each year brought the same seasonal routine.

  John Calvin Coolidge (who was named after his father but soon dropped the John) was born on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, which was in Plymouth township, a community on the eastern foothills of the Green Mountains. The Stage Road went through the township, and close by were the hamlets of Frog City, Tyson Furnace, and Five Corners. Tyson Furnace was named after an iron foundry that had been there in a more prosperous and hopeful period. The nearest large town was Ludlow, some twelve miles away.

  The Notch itself had only three public buildings—a school, a church, and a general store—and three dwellings. J.W. Stickney, a friend of the Coolidges, tried to present the township’s qualities in a favorable light in 1887:In Plymouth there are no large villages; the population is widely scattered among its hills; the churches are too small to make trouble with one another and too weak to have troubles among themselves—which gives the town a quietude unknown to places of strong churches with large memberships. The absence of railroads, and of a foreign population consequent upon railroad towns, is escaped, and no real cause exists here for trouble.

  This
is not to say that Plymouth was completely isolated. The railroad ran to Ludlow, a two-hour drive in those days, and Notch dwellers could go from there to Boston and other major cities. Few did. One of those who made the trip, at least twice yearly, was John Coolidge, Calvin’s father, a shopkeeper and farmer, who drove the family buggy to Ludlow to take the train to Boston, where he would arrange for shipments of supplies. Writing of him in the first chapter of his Autobiography, Coolidge said:My father, John Calvin Coolidge, ran the country store. He was successful. The annual rent of the whole place was $40. I have heard him say that his merchandise bills were about $10,000 yearly. He had no other expenses. His profits were about $100 per month on the average, so he must have sold on a very close margin.

  He trusted nearly everybody, but lost a surprisingly small amount. Sometimes people he had not seen for years would return and pay him the whole bill….

  He was a good businessman, a very hard worker, and he did not like to see things wasted.

  John Coolidge must have earned a decent living, because he helped support his son into his thirties. When he died in 1926 he left an estate of $70,000, a sizable amount in those days. Interestingly, in the shortest of all presidential memoirs, Coolidge told again about his father’s abhorrence of waste:My fundamental idea of both private and public business came first from my father. He had the strong New England trait of great repugnance at seeing anything wasted. He was a generous and charitable man, but he regarded waste as a moral wrong.