Calvin Coolidge
The Greatest Man to Come Out of Plymouth Notch, Vermont

Calvin Coolidge is a tough president to figure. Was he a good president? A bad president? The worst? The best? Was he even popular?

We do know that in his own time Calvin Coolidge was the butt of many a jibe and sneer. "Nero fiddled," wrote journalist H. L. Mencken, "but Coolidge only snored." Humorist Will Rogers assessed Calvin's legacy as, "He didn't do nothing, but that's what they wanted done." And when Calvin died, there is the (probably spurious) quote nowadays attributed to satirist Dorothy Parker, "How can they tell?"

Speaking literally, H. L. was not far off. Calvin probably slept more than any other president then or since. A good night's rest for him was a full twelve hours, and he was sure to recharge himself with a two hour nap in the afternoon. Will's quip - actually delivered with Calvin in attendance - was not far off either. Calvin felt what governs lest does the best and just let Wall Street do the rest. As far as Dorothy, we have to admit sometimes she just wasn't very nice.

Of course, popularity doesn't mean the approbation of the pundits. It's what the people think. So by that criterion Calvin was popular. He won the 1924 presidential election by more than 7,000,000 votes - almost as many as the total garnered by the runner-up, Democrat John Davis. Compare that margin to the measly 118,550 votes by which John Kennedy squeaked by Richard Nixon. And even today, JFK polls out as one of the most popular presidents of all time.

Despite recent attempts by some writers to reinvent Calvin as the

 

Greatest President We Ever Had

 

few of the people-on-the-streets will stand up and say, "Why, what we really need today is a new Calvin Coolidge!" Except for the fact that he was a president, few people will know anything he did.

Certainly professional historians, regardless of their personal politics, have ranked him well below the median. Not the worst, true, but lower than Martin Van Buren, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Chester A. Arthur. But at least Calvin's higher than Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, and his own predecessor, Warren G. Harding, for crying out loud. Perhaps the most balanced eulogy was that is usually attributed to Attorney for the Damned (or as some say, just another damned attorney) Clarence Darrow. "Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont."

Actually John Calvin Coolidge, Jr., was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont on July 4, 1872. Yes, that was July 4. He came from a comfortable and prosperous family and graduated from Amherst College in 1895. Calvin decided not to go to law school since at that time it was not required to practice at the bar. Instead he "read" law with a local attorney, an option still available in a few states. He passed the bar exam in 1897, and in addition to practicing law, began to dabble in local politics. He became a state representative for Massachusetts in 1902, state senator in 1912, and finally lieutenant governor in 1915. A try for governor naturally made some sense, and he won the election in 1918.

Calvin's nomination for the Vice-Presidency in 1920 caught the nation - and his own Republican party - off the hop. The now forgotten Wisconsin Senator Irvine Lenroot had been the shoo-in candidate and pre-approved by the Party bosses. If you think Vice-Presidents are often forgotten now, think about people who didn't even get nominated. But yes, we nearly ended up with a president named Lenroot.

Calvin's selection put Warren Harding in a bit of a fix. Although Calvin had been in the national news as Massachusetts governor during the 1919 Boston police strike, he really wasn't really that well known. He also had a reputation for independence and was not one to be overly influenced by the party's leaders. Warren, though, was of the classic cigar-smoke-filled backroom 19th century school, gregarious and back-slapping. Happily, Warren soon found he didn't have much to worry about. Calvin saw himself as the #2 man, and Warren was the boss.

Then, even more than now, the Vice-President really had no function and just what to do during the day was a bit of a problem. Of course, Calvin had the nominal duties as President of the Senate, but that was almost always delegated to a president pro tempore. Besides the VP couldn't even cast a vote unless they needed a tie-breaker.

Calvin was not a man of pretensions. If there wasn't anything for him to do, then that was fine. In the spring of 1923, he and his wife, Grace, went up to the Coolidge family home where Calvin helped his dad, John, Sr., with the farm work. Since school was out, the two Coolidge boys, John and Calvin, Jr., found work as hired hands.

Then on August 2, 1923 while Calvin was still helping out on the family farm, Warren Harding died in his hotel room while on a trip to San Francisco. Exactly what he died of, well, you might was well take your pick. One popular informational website states it was a cerebral hemorrhage and indeed Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce and who quickly arrived at Warren's bedside, issued a press release that the President had died of a "stroke of cerebral apoplexy" - which is the old term for a cerebral hemorrhage. Other causes advanced have been pneumonia and food poisoning.

And, of course, murder.

The latter theory was actually written up - not in the recent years of our conspiracy minded culture - but in 1930. The claim is completely bogus, of course, and was prompted because Mrs. Harding refused to allow an autopsy. As the theory goes, she was trying to cover up that she had been super-irritated by her husband's making whoopee with his various girlfriends. Mrs. Harding's refusal to permit an autopsy particularly chagrined the physicians in attendance since murmurings were abounding that it was the doctors' incompetency that led to Warren's demise. In any cases, most references cite Warren's death as resulting from a heart attack.

That day Calvin had been helping a neighbor haul in his hay - remember we're talking about the Vice President of the United States - and had gone to bed at 9 p. m. At 2:30 a. m. a messenger banged on the door - there was no telephone in the house - and brought the news of Warren's death. Calvin's father, John, was the local JOP and swore his son in. Calvin then headed to Washington and reached it by 9 p. m. that day. Three months later, on December 8, he announced he would run for president in 1924.

So on March 4, 1925 Calvin became president for his second but first elected term. This was in the midst of the famous and now mythical Roaring Twenties. Prohibition had goobered things up and led - among other things - increased disrespect for law and government, hero worship of gangsters, contempt of public officials, and the rise of organized crime. Bootleggers, of course, were handled by the Treasury Department's agents like Eliot Ness. But a sharp increase of other crimes, particularly gang murders, bank robbery, kidnapping, and car theft, prompted additional empowerment of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation. In 1924, Calvin appointed John Edgar Hoover, a 29 year old bachelor who lived with his mother and had a friend named Clyde as its 6th director.

Calvin's time in office was filled with worldwide milestones. Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart both made solo airplane trips across the Atlantic, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fuel rocket, penicillin was discovered, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one year, and the Jazz Singer and Steamboat Willie were released. The first Winter Olympics were held in France, transatlantic radio stations began broadcasting and a working television set was demonstrated. And bubble gum and spiral notebooks hit the markets.

There were presidential milestones, too. Calvin was the first President to hold regular press conferences, generally twice a week. Like the press conferences held by earlier presidents, these were private meetings in Calvin's office and the questions had to be submitted (and approved) in advance. He was also the first president to be recorded speaking on film. We can also probably cite Calvin as the first president to actively hobnob with a major celebrity when he invited Charles Lindbergh to the White House after Lindy's cross-Atlantic hop. Calvin, though, never rode in an airplane himself. This itself was a milestone as every president since has.

As far as Prohibition itself, Calvin, like most politicians, didn't fight it since to do so would have left them open to the charge being against the Traditional Family Values. Calvin although he said he didn't drink was suspected of taking an occasional nip on the sly.

Something that isn't well known is that it was never illegal to keep or drink booze during Prohibition. It was against the law to manufacture, sell, or transport potables. Nothing about buying, owning, or drinking the stuff. So as long as you stocked up on your liquor holdings before the Volstead Act went into effect - and some of the wealthiest of America's more bibulous families purchased enough to fill their spacious cellars - you could drink for the next 14 years with perfect legality.

One of Calvin's bad habits - by today's standards - was he was a heavy smoker, an actual addict, consuming up to 25 cigars a day. He liked the best cigars - whatever that means - but kept cheap brands to offer to others. Once the early radio inventor and executive, John Hammond Hays, sent Calvin a box of particularly expensive cigars. When he next visited Calvin, Calvin offered John a standard selection of cheap stogies. John politely declined and sheepishly Calvin pulled out the box of the cigars John had sent and offered him one.

Whether you come to praise or bury him, Calvin - as was Woodrow Wilson - is a perfect president. If it suits your pleasure for him to be a progressive, humane, and effective president, you can point out that he restored diplomatic relations with Mexico which had soured after America had invaded the country and made a hash of its search for Pancho Villa (the fact that Pancho had been killed a month before Calvin became President certainly helped clear the way for the recognition). He pardoned conscientious objectors who had opposed World War I and had pushed for extra veterans benefits for the disabled. He spoke about the economic plight of the American farmer, objected to the disparately low wages for women, took a courageous stand against discrimination and violence against blacks, and he even advocated a constitutional amendment against child labor. The amendment wasn't passed, although it perhaps it should have been. Recently a presidential candidate was insisting what a healthy economy really needed was the repeal of child labor laws.

Calvin actively investigated the scandals of the previous administration and didn't hesitate to sack the guilty whoever they were. He granted no favors to friends or contributors to his campaigns. And best of all, when he ran for president in 1924, he did not go in for the personal smears of negative campaigning - something that today politicians have made de rigeur. In fact, he didn't even actively campaign and gave only two relatively non-political speeches.

On the other hand, if you don't like Calvin, you can point out that his words in favor of women's equality and rights of blacks led to no new laws. He refused to legislate any bonus for World War I veterans - at a time when some were literally living on the streets - stating they had already received enough for their service. Furthermore his economic policies worked against the hard working industrious Americans he was supposed to champion. In the 1920's farm prices had become depressed largely because of the farmers' success. Yields were so high there was a food surplus and prices plummeted. Congressmen from the agricultural states had developed legislation to form the Agricultural Export Corporation, which would be established to buy the surplus food and sell it abroad. Calvin, though, despite public sympathy for the farmers woes, saw no reason treat the complex economics of agriculture any different than household management. If the farmers were too inefficient to sell the food and make a profit, well, that was just tough tiddy. He vetoed the bill and thousands of farmers lost the land their families had owned for generations.

Calvin Detractors can also point to his personal behavior as being particularly non-presidential. Despite his outward appearance of calm New England stoicism, Calvin was difficult to deal with. He would sometimes send one of the White House domestic staff to get a newspaper, and if they neglected to give him his change - which might be only seven cents - he would go looking for them. He had an explosive temper, and Grace knew if he was cheerful at the end of the day, he had blown his stack at someone. He could be suspicious of people - even his family - and he once transferred the Secret Service agent assigned to Grace since he thought the two might be getting too cozy.

Although he advocated hard work, Calvin's own workday was only about four hours which is about par for someone who sleeps fourteen or fifteen hours a day. His short day was reflected in his lack of knowledge of specific legislation and when asked by reporters about various bills making their way through Congress, he replied he didn't know much about them.

Although there are considerable variations in the tellings, there's no doubt Calvin would play strangely puerile jokes on the White House staff. One story was he would tell them to prepare for a particularly important visitor, and then they'd scurry around to get things ready. Then Calvin would walk in alone. After all, he told them, there was no one more important than the president. Or he might have them prepare for a visitor only to go for a walk outside leaving them waiting.

Sometimes his reported antics were pathologically bizarre. He would press the doorbell of the White House (even at that time, access to the building was surprisingly open) and then hide behind a curtain when the doorman answered the bell. He would press the buzzer to summon his Secret Service agents and then hide under his desk before they arrived. The agents would then search for their missing boss and even worry he may have been kidnapped. Another variant of the prank was to press all the buttons on his desk just to make everyone scramble. Irwin "Ike" Hoover, the chief usher at the White House said the president's behavior coupled with his frequent eruptions kept the staff on edge and worried about their jobs.

John, Calvin's oldest son, remembered his dad as a rather stern and aloof parent, quite the opposite from his cheerful and easygoing mother. Grace was a college graduate and like many women of the emerging 20th century thought women could do more than just run a household. She had graduated from the University of Vermont and taught at a school for deaf children before she married. But Calvin had difficulty in dealing with her as a political partner rather than just as a helpmeet. He wouldn't even bother telling her his daily schedule and if asked, he just told her, "Grace, we don't give out that information promiscuously." Most accounts of their marriage state that nevertheless it was happy, but some authors have reported that at times Grace considered divorce.

Calvin could, though, take a joke. Will Rogers met the President in 1924 and found - to his surprise - that Calvin was easy to talk to and had a good sense of humor. There's the famous story - which may or may not be true - that when Will was first introduced to the president, Will responded politely, "Excuse me, I didn't quite get the name." Calvin, at least so the story goes, actually smiled.

But there was a limit. When Will later imitated Calvin in one of his routines, the President was not amused. And when Will appeared before the President and delivered his famous "He didn't do nothin', but that's what they wanted done" joke, Calvin remained distinctly stone faced.

The Coolidges were always animal lovers. Calvin particularly liked dogs, but at the White House he also kept cats, birds, and other animals. He and Grace particularly loved Rebecca, their pet racoon, and sometimes Calvin would take the animal for walks on a leash.

In 1924, during in his first term, Calvin and Grace's second son, Calvin, Jr., died at age 16 from an infected blister which had produced a staph infection of the blood. In those pre-antibiotic days, such minor injuries often led to serious complications. But the suddenness of it all had a terrible effect on both Calvin and Grace.

Like many parents who lost children, Calvin felt responsibility for his son's death. In his memoirs, he said that had he not become president then Calvin, Jr., would have still been alive and wondered why such a "price" would be exacted for occupying the White House. One historian noted that many of Calvin's stranger characteristics showed up after Calvin, Jr. died and were distinct symptoms of clinical depression so severe that today we would likely consider Calvin to have been disabled during his second term.

Calvin himself died fairly young even by the standards of the day, only living until 1933, age 60. Grace had been out of the house and Calvin had been putting together a jig-saw puzzle of George Washington when he was stricken with a heart attack. Grace herself lived until 1957, aged 79, and John became a successful businessman, dying in the year 2000 at age 93.

Historians who look on Calvin benignly claim it was his tax-cutting, government reduction, and giving reign to the financial firms that gave America the best boom times it ever had. Less hagiographically minded critics claim it was his tax-slashing, government cutting, and giving free reign to the financial firms who - as Will Rogers put it - "over-merged and over-capitalized and over everything else" - that led to the bubble of massive speculation, margin buying, and insider trading that finally burst as the Great Depression only six months after Calvin left office. For some reason few of the today's commentators see that tax-cutting, government reduction, and giving reign to the financial firms can lead to the best boom times we ever had and still lead to the bubble of massive speculation, margin buying, and insider trading that finally burst as the Great Depression

Not surprisingly the New Deal historians who wrote from the mid-1930's to the 1970's trashed Calvin pretty soundly. Irving Stone - the popular writer of novels that are often mistaken for history and biography - said Calvin's laissez faire policies not only caused the Great Depression but in doing so created the worldwide economic turmoil that led to the rise of the European dictatorships and so to World War II. A harsh assessment, indeed, and in fairness, we should remember that Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, well before Calvin was President.

So what was Calvin, a good president or a bad president? Oddly enough, the answer has little to do with Calvin.

Instead we have to paraphrase historian Robert Utley when he spoke about George Armstrong Custer. Calvin Coolidge is who we want him to be. If we believe Calvin was an economic genius who understood how to run a modern government, who was the first real advocate of equality of the races and human rights, a man who encouraged technology, and led the United States into the modern era, we will find all we need to prove that case. If, on the other hand, we want Calvin to be a part-time, snoozing, do-nothing president who destroyed American small farms, let open the gates to the financial predators who robbed families of their homes and life savings, who may have been cracking up while in office, and whose simplistic ideas of a nation's economy ultimately led to the most catastrophic time of the world, we can find all we want in the historical record to prove that, too.

But at least if we read the Coolidge biographies, we can figure out how the authors will vote in the next election.

Calvin surprised Americans with his succinct "I do not choose to run in 1928." Why he chose to step down - despite a massive push to draft his nomination - has been debated ever since. Naturally a number of authors have hypothesized that even he finally realized his loose money policies were letting the piper play and soon the payment would be due.

There was certainly enough concern about the financial speculation that Congress was considering legislation to curb it, and Calvin was certainly aware of it. Publicly, though, Calvin never changed his stand that less government was better. During the election campaign of 1932, he gave speeches urging the re-election of Herbert Hoover and trashing New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt who was calling for major government intervention to fight the Depression.

Calvin's own reason he didn't run were simple and certainly are true as far as they went. He said he felt that the two-term tradition that began with George Washington itself ruled out a third term, and besides, the presidents who did serve out two terms tended to have little to show for the extra four years. Finally he said that being a president for a ten full years would be too taxing on both his health and that of Grace.

True, a lot of people - even Herbert Hoover - claimed they anticipated what was coming, but inevitably such "predictions" were colored by hindsight and written long after the events. No, Calvin's own reasons for leaving can be taken at face value, and he saw it was time to move on. But above all else, as one essayist put it, he was a lucky, lucky man.

H. L. Mencken certainly doubted Calvin's prescience as the expanded quote from above makes clear:

[Coolidge] showed not the slightest sign that he smelt black clouds ahead; on the contrary, he talked and lived only sunshine. There was a volcano boiling under him, but he did not know it, and was not singed. When it burst forth at last, it was Hoover who got its blast, and was fried, boiled, roasted and fricasseed. How Dr. Coolidge must have chuckled in his retirement, for he was not without humor of a sad, necrotic kind. He knew Hoover well, and could fathom the full depths of the joke.

In what manner he would have performed himself if the holy angels had shoved the Depression forward a couple of years - this we can only guess, and one man's hazard is as good as another's. My own is that he would have responded to bad times precisely as he responded to good ones - that is, by pulling down the blinds, stretching his legs upon his desk, and snoozing away the lazy afternoons. Here, indeed, was his one peculiar Fach, his one really notable talent. He slept more than any other President, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored. When the crash came at last and Hoover began to smoke and bubble, good Cal was safe in Northampton, and still in the hay.

H. L.'s bitter gall notwithstanding, in the end, Calvin probably had the last laugh. Ask Joe Blow on the street. They'll know who Calvin Coolidge was.

But who the heck remembers H. L. Mencken?

References

A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, John Wiley and Sons, 2014. A good book, but way, way overpriced. Thank goodness for library loans!

Calvin Coolidge, David Greenberg, Arthur Schlesinger (Editor), American Presidents Series, Times Books, 2006.

Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge, Cosmopolitan, 1929

American Presidents Year by Year, Julie Nelson, Routledge, 2003.

"Silent Cal", Peter Clements, History Review, Issue 46, pp. 15 - 18, September 2003.

"Campaign of 1960", John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

"The 'Strange' Death of Warren G. Harding", Howard Markel, M. D., PBS News Hour.

The Strange Death Of President Harding, Robert Ferrell, University Of Missouri Press, 1996

The Tormented President: Calvin Coolidge, Death, and Clinical Depression, Robert Gilbert, Praeger, 2003.

My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, Lillian Rogers Parks Fleet Publication, 1961. Not to be confused with the novel that was based on the mini-series that was based on Ms. Parks' book. The current author read both books and saw the series and thought the original book the best.

Foundations of Democracy: A Series of Debates, Thomas Smith and Robert Taft, Knopf, 1939.

The Lawless Decade: A Pictorial History of a Great American Transition: From the World War I Armistice and Prohibition to Repeal and the New Deal, Paul Sann, Crown Publishers, 1957.

The Vintage Mencken, H. L. Mencken (Alistair Cooke, Ed.), Vintage Press, 1955.

Try and Stop Me, Bennett Cerf, Simon and Schuster, 1944. Bennet's books have sometimes been lampooned as just recycling old jokes that are not very funny. Of course, 1) a lot of Bennet's jokes are funny, and 2) most of what he wrote were first hand accounts of famous people, many of whom he knew personally such as George Gershwin and Alexander Woollcott. Bennet's essays are extremely well written and should be collected into a single volume.

"Unusual Political Career of Calvin Coolidge, Never Defeated for an Office", Obituary of Calvin Coolidge, New York Times, January 6, 1933.

Presidential Diversions: Presidents at Play from George Washington to George W. Bush, Paul F. Boller, Jr., Harcourt, 2007.