President Calvin Coolidge
On July 4, 1872 – the 96th anniversary of the nation’s Day of Independence – John Calvin Coolidge Jr., the 30th President of the United States, was born. Coolidge’s presidency has often been overlooked by most presidential scholars, placing much more attention on Woodrow Wilson, before him, and Franklin Roosevelt, after him.
The 2010 Siena College presidential poll, surveying 238 presidential scholars at U.S. colleges and universities, ranked Coolidge as the 29th greatest president. Other polls show that Coolidge usually ranks in the middle. Historians often rank the “greatness” of a president based on the level of action taken by that president rather than on their adherence to the Constitution.
Although Coolidge may not have held office during a time of war or great economic calamity, or spearheaded a new expansionary government program such as Roosevelt’s “New Deal” or Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” his greatness should be measured by his inaction and conformity to the Constitution.
Coolidge became the nation’s 30th President, in 1923, following the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding. At the time Vice President Coolidge was on his father’s farm in Vermont and he was told of the news at night. His father, a judge, administered the oath office to him, which made Coolidge the first and only president ever to be sworn in by his own father.
When the news arrived that Coolidge had just become the President, one of his sons, Calvin Coolidge Jr., was working on his grandfather’s farm. One of the farm workers told the boy, “I wouldn’t be doing the work you’re doing if my father was President.” Young Calvin replied, “Oh, yes you would, if your father was my father.”
While much has been written or said of the Coolidge Presidency, very little has been discussed about Coolidge the Man, and who he really was.
Coolidge’s roommate in Amherst College was John P. Deering (left), who would eventually become a Judge in Saco, Maine. Following Coolidge’s elevation to the presidency, Judge Deering told reporters a little about their new president.
Asked whether Coolidge would make a good president, Judge Deering, with a look of astonishment that such a question would even be asked of his former college roommate, confidently replied, “Make good! Most assuredly he will.”
Judge Deering knew Coolidge in a way that most people did not; living with him gave him the opportunity to observe firsthand the type of person who Coolidge was.
Deering first met his friend during “the fall that we entered college, when we both were taking our meals at Jack Collin’s boarding house at the foot of College hill. He charged us $3.50 a week, each, for table board,” he said.
After a short pause and chuckle, as a he reminisced, he continued, “Jack failed the middle of that winter and his place was closed up. I can’t say that it was because Cal and I ate so much or what it was.
“After that we college boys who were eating there, scattered to the other places in Amherst and ate for the winter. The next year we were back eating together at the Huntresses, where it cost us $3, each per week. They didn’t fail.”
Deering recalled Coolidge’s interests and his intense study of American History. “Coolidge started to study history, or rather he began to specialize on colonial and national history. He became a great admirer of Alexander Hamilton.”
Coolidge’s knowledge of history paid off, quite literally in fact; he “won a $100 prize with an essay on colonial history,” Deering recalled.
Both men lived together during their junior year of college and pledged Phi Delta Gamma, becoming fraternity brothers.
As for the type of person Coolidge was during his college and fraternity days, Deering said: “Perhaps I ought not to say it, he’s President of the United States, now, but don’t let anybody tell you that in college Cal Coolidge didn’t take part in any of our pranks. He did. I don’t say he was a ringleader, but I can tell you that he originated a lot of the ideas which we fellows put into execution.”
Coolidge’s pranks and sense of humor continued into his presidency. In Lillian Rogers Parks’ memoirs My Thirty Years Backstairs At The White House (left), her mother, Margaret Rogers, a maid at the White House from 1909 to 1939, recounted that “as a trick on the staff, he would press all the buttons on his desk and chuckle as they popped into his office from all directions.” Margaret Rogers recalled that when they all scattered into President Coolidge’s office that he would say, “Just wanted to see if everybody’s working.”
This comical side of Coolidge does not seem to fit with the image of Coolidge portrayed as a grim and serious individual.
Lillian Parks asked her mother if Pres. Coolidge was “really as stern and sour-faced as he looked in pictures?”
Margaret Rogers would assure her that such a characterization was most certainly not true. “That’s just his way, and he has fooled the public,” she said, “but he has the best sense of humor and makes more people laugh than any other Presidents I’ve known.”
Judge Deering made a similar assessment, taking exception to the notions made by some that Coolidge was a reserved, cold and austere person. “Nothing austere, domineering, autocratic at all about Cal,” he told reporters.
“I predict that Pres. Coolidge’s decisions will be correct in about 9,999 times out of ten thousand,” Judge Deering told the reporters.
Coolidge enjoyed a laugh every now and then; once the White House staff decided to pull a prank on him.
“The zoo needed an appropriation of money,” Lillian wrote, “and Coolidge was going to attend the meeting at the Smithsonian with the Budget Director to take up this matter along with other affairs.”
During that time the staff trained a big yellow parrot-type bird. When the time was right, the bird was nudged and began yelling, “What about the appropriations, what about the appropriations?” At this moment Pres. Coolidge “almost fell out of his chair with laughter.” Lillian wrote, “His funny bone was always more easily tickled by the antics of animals than by those of humans.”
He enjoyed animals of all sorts; he even had a special pet raccoon named Rebecca. Coolidge would play with Rebecca as a child would with his beloved pet.
The one animal that Coolidge was not fond off, in fact he feared, was the snake. “Every time he went out on a fishing trip, the Secret Service men have to comb every square foot of the pathway the President would take, so he wouldn’t see a snake,” Parks wrote.
Another side of Coolidge, which should come as no surprise to people well versed in his economic policies, was his personal frugality when it came to spending his own money. President Coolidge continued the policies of Harding reducing the high taxes and deficit of the Wilson Administration, Coolidge also made sure that his personal wallet was in order.
According to Lillian’s book, “the White House staff was surprised that the President wanted every penny back when he gave them a coin to buy some little thing for him, like a newspaper.”
Lillian elaborates, “If they thought it was a tip, they would soon find out differently, because the President would go around saying, ‘Somebody owes me seven cents.’ And he meant it.”
Coolidge always kept track of his own finances and maintained a pretty standard daily routine. “Every morning after his walk, he fixed himself a cheese sandwich. Then he had breakfast,” as told by Margaret to Lillian.
Coolidge the Man, more so than his presidency, has been forgotten but no true account of his presidency would be complete without it.
As for the Coolidge presidency, as mentioned above, it is often overlooked by historians. Coolidge ranks low by historians and other scholars who look for action and bold initiative as their measurement of greatness, then he must actually be a really good president in accordance with the actual role of the President as stated in the Constitution.
Coolidge was a president who came during what was known as Progressive era, but governed like Grover Cleveland – the Constitutionalist conservative 22nd and 24th President. Although Coolidge was a Republican, he had more in common with the traditional southern conservative Democratic Party. Republicans, although still pro-business, were at the time also very progressive.
It was Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who spearheaded the Square Deal and began to break up monopolies; it was Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich from Rhode Island who sponsored the Federal Reserve Act; Henry Wallace, the pro-Soviet Union Democratic Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, was a Republican at the time; and it was also Republican Congressman William Lemke who would support the New Deal and run as the presidential candidate for Father Coughlin’s heavily leftist/ progressive Union Party. The New Deal was not socialist enough for Lemke.
This is not to say that Coolidge was no progressive either. After all he was still a Republican, which meant that he had a progressive streak. Although Coolidge opposed President Wilson’s proposal for a League of Nations, he did advocate U.S. participation and membership in the World Court and spoke highly of the Federal Reserve System.
In his Fourth State of the Union, Coolidge discussed banking and the Federal Reserve, saying:
It would be difficult to overestimate the service which the Federal Reserve System has already rendered to the country. It is necessary only to recall the chaotic condition of our banking organization at the time the Federal Reserve System was put into operation…
The Federal Reserve System… enables us to look to the future with confidence and to make plans far ahead, based on the belief that the Federal Reserve System will exercise a steadying influence on credit conditions and thereby prevent tiny sudden or severe reactions from the period of prosperity which we are now enjoying. In order that these plans may go forward, action should be taken at the present session on the question of renewing the banks' charters and thereby insuring a continuation of the policies and present usefulness of the Federal Reserve System.
Despite these imperfections, Coolidge was for the most part an opponent of government regulations. “I am in favor of reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people,” he explained in the same State of the Union address.
He criticized the left for its money-spending habits, stating, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone.”
Coolidge believed that the role of the government was to step out of the way and allow the market and business to prosper. “The business of America is business,” Coolidge famously declared. Although he did provide some financial assistance to private enterprises, he did so without creating any new regulations. Like President Grover Cleveland, who vetoed regulation of the market on the grounds of it being un-Constitutional, Coolidge also took his authorization from the Constitution.
In 1927, Pres. Coolidge vetoed a bill to give government benefits to soldiers and veterans, just as President Cleveland had done during his administration. Coolidge’s strict adherence to the Constitution meant that he did not share in the loose interpretation of the ‘Commerce Clause,’ as so many in the federal government do today.
As a result of his understanding, he opposed those who advocated that the government takeover the operations of the Wilson Dam, at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River. Unfortunately the Dam would later become part of the move toward socialism by the federal government. In 1933, as one of Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” alphabet soup programs – the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) was launched.
Coolidge’s tax cuts and deregulations resulted in a budget surplus and the economically booming “Roaring Twenties,” which came to an end during the progressive regulatory administration of his successor President Herbert Hoover.
On August 3, 1927, President Coolidge announced that he did not “choose to run” for reelection in 1928. His intention was not to seek the nomination again, but rather to be drafted to run again at which time he would accept the nomination serving as the Republican Party presidential candidate in 1928. Instead, Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, won the Party’s presidential nomination.
Coolidge’s bluff fooled the nation; this time his quietness cost him that which he did want. Lillian Rogers, whose mother knew Coolidge quite well, wrote, “The public never knew how hurt the President was that he had not been ‘drafted,’ but Mama knew, and a lot of the White House people sensed it.”
Always with civility and grace, Coolidge respected the decision of the Party - much to his sadness. Upon leaving the White House, Coolidge said, "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business."
Coolidge remained in the spotlight through his writings that appeared in newspapers, until he died, on January 5, 1933, in his hometown Northampton, Massachusetts. He was 60 years old at the time of his death.
The nation mourned the loss of its former president in the midst of the Great Depression. The people recalled Coolidge as the president who presided over the nation’s greatest economic peace-time recovery after World War I. Decades later President Ronald Reagan would model his presidency after that of his hero Coolidge, saying of him that he was “one of our most underrated presidents.”
Today Coolidge’s legacy lives on with many libertarians and Tea Partiers who look back to Coolidge for both inspiration and leadership.
