Sometime in the mid-1920s, a Washington socialite seated next to the President Calvin Coolidge, supposedly turned to the famously taciturn president and said, “I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.”
Coolidge, whose nickname was “Silent Cal,” allegedly replied, “You lose.”
While it doesn’t appear that this exchange actually occurred, the story captures the essence of Coolidge, who is pictured on today’s #stampoftheday, a $5 stamp issued on November 17, 1938. Given his rectitude, it seems fitting that my late father’s collection includes every one of those stamps except for the one featuring Coolidge.
The stamp was the last (and therefore the most expensive) stamp in the Prexies, a series of stamps that pictured every U.S. president from Washington to Coolidge. (The series did not include a stamp portraying Herbert Hoover but did include stamps pictured both Ben Franklin and Martha Washington).
Coolidge, who became well known for busting a police strike in Boston when he was governor of Massachusetts, was elected vice-president in 1920 on a ticket headed by Warren G. Harding and became president in 1923 when Harding died. Coolidge was easily elected in 1924 and chose not to run again in 1928.
Although he was president during the Roaring Twenties, a decade of dynamic social and cultural change, materialism and excess, Coolidge was known for his quiet, steadfast and frugal nature, which was in sharp contrast with Harding, a personable president whose administration was riddled with scandals that Coolidge had to address when he took office.
As president, Coolidge was known for his pro-business policies, which he argued, were appropriate because “the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life.”
He also believed in a limited role for the federal government but a more active one for state and local governments. And while he gave serious attention to issues that crossed his desk, he gave his Cabinet secretaries, who included several talented conservatives, significant authority to do their work and to do so in highly public ways.
And he was no social reformer. When the KKK marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington in 1925 he offered only tepid criticism. He signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which set strict quotas on the number of eastern and southern Europeans allowed into America and excluded the Japanese altogether. And he kept a low profile on other major controversies such as the Scopes Monkey Trial and the case of Sacco and Vanzetti.
But he did have a winning side. Although known for his public discomfort with chitchat and for his philosophical dislike of excessive leadership, during his 67 months as President, he held 520 press conferences and he regularly spoke on national radio. He also was photographed in a variety of amusing costumes including old-fashioned overalls (when working on his father’s farm), full Indian headdress (when speaking to a crowd of ten thousand Sioux), and in cowboy chaps and hat (on vacation in South Dakota).
And, despite his reputation for being taciturn, he had a self-deprecating wit. After a man riding with Coolidge through Vermont observed, “See how closely they have shaved those sheep?” Coolidge replied: “At least on this side.” And when a man came up to him and angrily said, “I didn’t vote for you,” Coolidge just said: “Someone did.” He also seemed immune to the pretensions of politics. When his term ended, he told reporters, “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”
Since the economy generally flourished during his time as president, he was quite popular when he left office in early 1929. But the onset of the Great Depression led many to question his failure to address pressing problems, particularly his unwillingness to aid farmers who didn’t do well in the 1920s which not only caused many farmers to lose their land and led to the failure of nearly 5,000 rural banks. Moreover, the tax cuts that were the centerpiece of his economic policies contributed to growing economic inequality while his foreign policy failed to prevent the rise of fascism in Europe.
For all these reasons, Coolidge’s presidency came to be viewed negatively in the mid 20th century. However, he had a modest resurgence in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan moved his portrait from some obscure perch in the White House to a prominent place in the Cabinet Room. In his autobiography, Reagan wrote that he “always thought of Coolidge as one of our most underrated presidents.” Reagan added, “He [Coolidge] wasn’t a man with flamboyant looks or style, but he got things done in a quiet way.”
Despite Reagan’s accolades, most scholars consider Coolidge to have been one of America’s lesser presidents. I agree with that assessment. But, at this moment, I also can find much to admire in a president who didn’t take himself too seriously, said too little (instead of too much), and, when he did speak showed great respect for the office and the institutions of government.
In all those ways, Coolidge was a model worth emulating.