Remembering the greatest American president of them all
Mister we could use a man like Calvin Coolidge again, as I’ve insisted here again and again over lo, these many years.
When Ronald Reagan put Calvin Coolidge’s portrait up in the White House Cabinet Room, taking down a painting of Thomas Jefferson, the outrage in the media was deafening.
Historians typically treated Coolidge with disdain as well. When I was in college, as my contemporary history professor went through the run-up to the Great Depression, the only thing he said of Coolidge was, “If you took the Washington Monument and dug a commensurate hole in the ground, that would be a fitting monument for Calvin Coolidge’s contributions to America.” That was it. No argument, no specifics, nothing to substantiate this view.
In the years since, historians have revisited Coolidge. Thomas B. Silver made an important contribution in the early 1980s with his book Coolidge and the Historians. Paul Johnson got a lot of the story right in Modern Times and A History of the American People. The restoration culminated in Amity Shlaes’s spectacular biography, Coolidge.
Of course, Coolidge still achieves middling marks in most presidential rankings. He has that reputation as Silent Cal. This is a superficial take. Coolidge was not silent at all. He gave more press conferences than any other president and used the radio well. But his taciturn nature remains legendary. It makes for fun reading.
Still, I have always thought historians who disliked Coolidge had a secondary purpose to attaching the Silent Cal label to him: they hoped you would ignore what he said—because if you read it, you might be persuaded by it.
No Real American could fail to be, far as I’m concerned. Taciturn Coolidge may (or may not) have been, but when he did utter, it was always to say something truly worth listening to. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the current sad, sorry state of affairs can in part be blamed on our having failed to properly remember Silent Cal, along with his crucial words and thoughts on the essentials required to keep a nation free, strong, and thriving.
A few notable quotes illustrating the man’s philosophy of government, his sagacity and wit, his seemingly instinctual facility for stripping away the dross, fripperies, and distractions and cutting arrow-straight to the heart of any given issue.
“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.
Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty.”
“Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in our world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, and the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in the republic, the other is represented by despotism.
The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of law for the virtue of man. Of course we endeavor to restrain the vicious, and furnish a fair degree of security and protection by legislation and police control, but the real reform which society in these days is seeking will come as a result of our religious convictions, or they will not come at all. Peace, justice, humanity, charity—these cannot be legislated into being. They are the result of divine grace.”
“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”
“Don’t you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?”
“They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.”
“The only way I know to drive out evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good.”
“This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies.”
“When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.”
“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”
“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.”
Good stuff, no? My God, in light of current harsh reality the man wasn’t merely a president, he was a prophet. The total dearth of anything remotely resembling such high-minded yet eminently practical rhetoric delineating bedrock American ideals amongst contemporary ProPols has left the nation’s political discourse stunted and hopelessly diminished. Back to the first article for our denouement.
Coolidge was the last of our presidents in the model of the Founders. Every other president since him, in both parties, has been in the activist mold of Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson to one degree or another.
And so Coolidge was the last of the statesmen who would have fit comfortably alongside Jefferson and Madison. We could use more presidents with that disposition.
If we think about what we want in our statesmen, what qualities of character, what depth of insight about our Constitution and how our society works, we would say we want more leaders like Coolidge.
A-friggin’ men to that, with big ol’ bells on. If we had any damned sense, at any rate.
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