Coolidge

by Amity Shlaes

the group was less important than the individual, Garman said, because there was really no such thing as group happiness. It was even a mistake to speak of sacrificing individuals for “the happiness of the community.” The community was composed of individuals.

Observers noticed his ability to hear people out; later he would to be called “an eloquent listener.”

The third reason for the sudden halt was the most important: Coolidge was not sure what he believed, and not sure that the party knew what it believed either.

If only this would happen today.

Price controls didn’t work now, either. In addition to respect for the reign of law, by which he meant the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Coolidge was now asking for respect for an older sort of law, the law of markets. “Isn’t it a strange thing,” he asked Barton, “that in every period of social unrest men have the notion that they can pass a law and suspend the operations of economic law?”

“We have no money to bestow upon a class of people that is not taken from the whole people,”

Selden Spencer, a Missouri senator who had visited that summer, told a story about him. One day, walking with the president on the White House grounds, Spencer had pointed to the White House and made a joke: “I wonder who lives there?” “Nobody,” Coolidge had replied. “They just come and go.”

The Senate, still in session, did something provocative upon learning of Stone’s nomination; the senators asked the nominee to testify at a hearing.

Imagine a world where show trials mislabeled "hearings" don't happen.

Praise for Coolidge’s position came from The New York Times: “Fortunately, there are still some things that can be done without the wisdom of Congress and the all-fathering Federal Government.”

A president was surrounded by yes-men; eventually, a president started to believe them and forget the work of those permanent institutions he had mentioned Washington forming. Even great presidents like the ones Borglum was sculpting forgot that the office mattered more than the man.

As for Mount Rushmore, Coolidge knew where he stood. Composing the inscription Borglum sought represented service. A colossal bust beside Roosevelt and Washington did not. There was a case for monuments to other presidents. But the best monument to his kind of presidency was no monument at all.

This is an amazing, humble way of being. If only we had leaders who modeled this today.

One day, as they walked together down the street, Coolidge held his silence, then finally said to Starling, “Well, they’re going to elect that superman Hoover, and he’s going to have some trouble. He’s going to have to spend money.” He went on, “But he won’t spend enough. Then the Democrats will come in and they’ll spend money like water. But they don’t know anything about

money.” They would want Coolidge to come back again, but he wouldn’t be available.

The United States did not need a treaty, he wrote in the message, even if it was considering one: “Proposals for promoting the peace of the world will have careful consideration. But we are not a people who are always seeking for a sign. We know that peace comes from honesty and fair dealing, from moderation, and a generous regard for the rights of others. The heart of the Nation is more important than treaties.”

What mattered was that Coolidge and Lord were leaving the federal government smaller than they had found it.

😭

There were many ways to help a people, Coolidge had said. Vermont’s way was to allow people to help themselves, as the reporter had noted during the flood.

Every hour that remained in his presidency was an hour he could use to emphasize the primacy of law. Let the potentates send their golden shields. He would send back law books.

Coolidge felt lucky to have survived that killer, the presidency.

When the Coolidges stepped off the train, Grace later recalled, they realized that the office of the presidency was what had separated them.

Another story, told by Richard Scandrett, Morrow’s brother-in-law, caught Coolidge demonstrating how to handle a contract. Scandrett described a meeting at the Vanderbilt involving a deal between Collier’s and Coolidge. The magazine had asked him to write ten articles for the high sum of $2,000 each, but the magazine had published only six. Summoned by the ex-president to meet at the hotel, the editor knew what question would come, and it did: “I made a contract with you to write ten articles at $2,000 each and I wrote them and you published six, and you haven’t published the other four.” Yes, came the editor’s reply, with the predictable response: the magazine had paid for all ten. “But if they aren’t worth publishing,” Coolidge said, “they oughtn’t to be paid for,” and he pulled out a check for $8,000. The move was deliberate, and deliberately Coolidge: somehow he had not pleased the other party. He gave the money back even though the contract did not say that he had to. The point, for him, was a simple one: it was important to show people that you cared about what they expected, so that they would want to do business with you again.

What a cool story. This man had amazing morals.

In the autobiography, readers who for many months had been guessing finally learned what Coolidge had meant when he said, “I do not choose”: 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.

He tried to articulate his concern that the election had become a spending contest, the sort Republicans always lost.

They still lose.

Later Governor Smith, who himself had often persevered after setbacks, expressed the judgment that Coolidge’s greatest feat had been to restore the dignity and prestige of the presidency when it had reached “the lowest ebb in our history.” Coolidge was, he said, “in the class of presidents who were distinguished for character more than for heroic achievements.”

The idea that his life’s papers might be displayed grandly offended Coolidge as the kind of “self-aggrandizement” he condemned in others. Coolidge approved of the National Archives and even backed a $1 million appropriation toward a structure to house the archives. But the modern concept of a large, federally funded presidential library he would have deemed inappropriate; if the public should pay for a presidential library, it should pay at the town or state level. State and town governments or private philanthropies were, in Coolidge’s opinion, the proper custodians of citizens’ materials, even of citizen-presidents.