30. CALVIN COOLIDGE (Silence is Golden)
Born: July 4, 1872, Plymouth, Vermont
Died: January 5, 1933, Northampton, Massachusetts
Term: August 2, 1923- March 4, 1929
Political Party: Republican
Vice President: Charles Dawes
First Lady: Grace Goodhue Coolidge
Before the Presidency: John Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He had no major ambitions growing up, just wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as an honest small-town merchant. He was an average student in school until he blossomed at Amherst College where he graduated with honors in 1895. A member of the Republican Club, Coolidge was known for his wit and his public speaking skills. On his oratory skills, he was chosen to deliver the Grove Oration, a send up on his Senior Class at graduation. He also won a national essay contest for “The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution.” He also relied on other Amherst Graduates such as his future Attorney General, Harlan Stone.
Coolidge passed the Massachusetts Bar in 1897 and began his law practice in Northampton. He also starting to get involved in Republican politics.
Coolidge suffered personal losses in his youth with the death of his mother and younger sister. He would form a bond with his stepmother, however. His father, meanwhile, was a pillar of his community and had a political career of his own. Along with being a storekeeper, he served in the Vermont House of Representatives as well as a term in the State Senate. That along with his prudence with money, would be a big influence on Calvin.
His political career started with a seat on the Northampton City Council. His star rose steadily as he was appointed the city solicitor a year later. After a stint as a county clerk, he ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1906. Four years later, he was elected Mayor of Northampton followed by three years in the Massachusetts State Senate where he would preside as President. In 1916, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and was off to Boston.
It was Coolidge’s election as Governor of Massachusetts where he gained National prominence. In 1919, the Boston Police went on strike. Governor Coolidge sent the Massachusetts State Guard to restore order by force and to break the strike. He faced up to AFL Union leader Samuel Gompers and won. The militia, meanwhile, policed the streets of Boston until the now fired strikers could be replaced. Coolidge was seen as a national hero even being praised by President Wilson.
Coolidge’s term as Governor was fairly progressive by his standards. He supported pay increases for public employees, limited the workweek for women and children to 48 hours (the child labor laws in the early twentieth century were pretty abysmal), and placed limits on outdoor advertising. He also consolidated the state government.
So, as 1920 rolled around, he was being touted as the favorite son candidate for the Presidential nomination.
Summary of offices held:
1899: Northampton City Council
1900-1903: Northampton City Solicitor
1903-1904: County Clerk, Hampshire County, Massachusetts
1907-1909: Massachusetts House of Representatives
1910-1912: Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts
1912-1915: Massachusetts Senate
1914-1915: President, Massachusetts Senate
1916-1919: Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts
1919-1921: Governor of Massachusetts
1921-1923: Vice President of the United States
What was going on: Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the Ku Klux Klan, The Scopes Monkey Trial, Teapot Dome scandal
Scandals within the administration: none major
Why he was a good President: Well, he kept his cool, didn’t he? Seriously though, he never wavered from his political philosophy (which, admittedly, isn’t mine). He did cut taxes to the point where few Americans paid any. He balanced the budget, and he took advantage of the media at the time becoming the first real radio President. Most importantly, he wasn’t Warren Harding and brought back integrity to the office.
Why he was a bad President: His economic policies, which seemed great at the time, directly led to what would become the Great Depression. He also wasn’t the most socially activist President, even to the point of tolerating (though not necessarily approving) the Ku Klux Klan.
What could have saved his Presidency: he should have had more foresight in economic matters. He missed the Wall Street crash by about seven months.
What could have destroyed his Presidency: Had the stock market crash happened a year sooner or if the KKK had been ultimately successful.
How he became Vice President: As mentioned, Governor Coolidge, came into Chicago as a favorite son candidate and he received 34 votes on the first ballot. Of course, he had absolutely no chance of winning.
He wasn’t discussed in the smoke-filled room where deals were made. It was there where Warren Harding was decided on for President. However, they initially wanted Senator Irving Lenroot of Wisconsin for the running mate.
But there was a groundswell for Coolidge on the floor and, after a push by some rebellious delegates, Coolidge was nominated as Vice-President.
Coolidge did his part in the campaign as well, stumping in the South mostly, though in vain. The South was still largely Democratic (or Dixiecratic really). Nevertheless, it as an easy win overall in November and Coolidge was the Vice President of the United States.
As, Vice President, Coolidge would keep a low profile until, on August 2, 1923, while vacationing at his father’s home in Vermont, he was awakened with the news that President Harding had died. Coolidge’s father, a justice of the peace, swore Coolidge in at 2:24 AM.
And the new President coolly went back to bed.
First term: President Coolidge served out the rest of Harding’s term with little fanfare. There were some things brewing such as the Ku Klux Klan more or less taking over Oklahoma. Coolidge himself would let his goals be known in a State of the Union Address supporting prohibition and U.S. involvement in the World Court. He, like Harding before him, vetoed the bonus bill, although his would be overridden later. The Congress passed an even more restrictive immigration law banning the Japanese entirely and severely limiting everyone else outside of Canada and Mexico. He also oversaw the signing of the Dawes plan which was to solve the German reparation problem. It wouldn’t be enough to save the world from Hitler, however.
Election of 1924: President Coolidge, already popular in his own right, was ready for a try of a term of his own. He was unscathed from the Teapot Dome Scandal and was indeed praised for his honesty and decency at a time when it was so sorely needed by the President. So, despite the challenges from the likes of everyone’s favorite anti-Semite, Henry Ford, Coolidge would win the nomination fairly easily. He was known as Silent Cal by then, known for his disdain for small talk. He had hoped to peg Senator William Borah as his running mate, but he turned the offer down. So, they ended up going with the colorful Charles Dawes of Illinois.
The Democrats were, at the very least, a little more entertaining. For they had no clear front runner to challenge Coolidge. Not that they didn’t have their own stable of candidates who wanted a shot at him., indeed, there were several solid contenders such as Governor Al Smith of New York, touted by the returning Franklin Roosevelt (he had just recovered from polio) as the “Happy Warrior.” He was challenged by Wilson’s former Treasury Secretary, William McAdoo. McAdoo was supported by William Jennings Bryan due to his positive stance on prohibition (this was the year before the Scopes trial that would tarnish Bryan’s reputation somewhat). Prohibition, by now, had become something of a divisive issue within the Democratic party. In the end, the Democrats went with John Davis, a former ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The general campaign got off to a tragic start as President Coolidge’s son died of an infection during the Democratic Convention (they suspended out of respect). Once everything got rolling, however, it was more or less a repeat of the 1920 campaign. “Keep Cool With Coolidge” was the campaign slogan for the Republicans as they held the line on tariffs and stayed mum on just about everything else including prohibition and the KKK. Davis, on the other hand, openly condemned the Ku Klux Klan and, as such, made open the rift among the Democrats between the Jim Crow South and the Civil Rights advocacy that was gaining with the Northern Democrats.
Thanks to a progressive third-party campaign led by Robert LaFollette, Coolidge all but destroyed Davis in the popular vote and easily won his chance at his own term.
Second Term: President Coolidge certainly wasn’t what you would call an activist President. The Congress passed the Revenue Act which lowered government spending and cut income taxes considerably. The economy was booming and President Coolidge was content with letting the good times roll.
He was a little more active on the foreign front. Though opposed to joining the League of Nations, he favored joining the World Court (which Congress would also reject). He also participated, through Secretary of State Kellogg, in the Kellogg- Briand pact, a resolution that more or less outlawed war (I know, seems pretty naïve now, doesn’t it?). He also took an economic interest in Latin America, sometimes with the Monroe Doctrine in mind. Meanwhile, the more militaristic Roosevelt Corollary was all but abandoned.
Despite Coolidge’s reputation as the quiet type, he was quite available to the public, holding two news conferences a week and becoming well known on the radio. He was known for his sense of humor and once even wore an Indian headdress given to him by Yellow Robe’s daughter (Lakota tribe).
There were other things going on that Coolidge more or less ignored such as a major Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Washington in 1925. It was all but ignored except for a passing critical comment, hardly the outrage John Davis had vocalized the year before.
It was also the era of the Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee (will have to write about that someday) and Lindbergh’s cross-Atlantic flight. It was a quite exciting time in the mid to late twenties.
President Coolidge was as popular as any President has ever been, and he would have been re-elected easily in 1928. But he chose not to run, citing the two term rule (though, in Coolidge’s case, that might have been a little iffy).
Post Presidency: Coolidge announced he wasn’t running in 1928 with little fanfare. Even his wife was to quip, “What announcement?”
In truth, he had never really gotten over the death of his son in 1924 from a blister infection. Penicillin wasn’t around in those days so if you got an infection, you could very well be toast. In any event, he returned to Northampton where he worked on his autobiography and wrote a newspaper column. He traveled the country with his wife and even dined with Huey Long, the Governor of Louisiana. He would also speak infrequently on behalf of President Hoover, besieged from the ills of the Great Depression, an economic crisis in which the seeds were, unfortunately, due to the Coolidge policies.
On January 5, 1933, Coolidge, after having eaten lunch, collapsed and died of a heart attack.
Odd notes: A dinner companion reportedly bet Coolidge she couldn’t extract three words from him. He answered, “You lose.”
Coolidge once pardoned a raccoon.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/...coolidge-facts
Final Summary: Well, whether you liked his policies or not, you have to admit Calvin Coolidge was a pretty cool dude. And, really, he wasn’t all that terrible a President. As noted before, he certainly brought trust and integrity back to the White House (Whether he was able to recover the White House China Harding gambled away, we don’t know). He also was an advocate for world peace and, with the help of radio, he made the Presidency more accessible.
But he’ll also have to bear the cross with his economic policy. Yes, things were booming during his tenure, but the signs of a market crash were already there. There were absolutely no regulations then and speculators were running amok. Coolidge couldn’t see the writing on the wall, maybe no one could. I also wish he had taken a tougher stand against the Ku Klux Klan. Oklahoma’s Governor did, in fact, and got rewarded by being thrown out of office. Somehow, I don’t think that would have happened to Coolidge, not in the 1920s anyway.
But overall, yeah, he was a much better President than Harding had been for sure. Now would he have handled the Depression better than Hoover had? Honestly, I doubt it.
But for the time period that he served; Coolidge was certainly the right President for the times. Just don’t ask him how the weather is.
Overall rating: C+
https://millercenter.org/president/coolidge