Calm counsel from Calvin Coolidge: Make the GOP Republican again
Calvin Coolidge, who secured the nomination for vice-president of the United States 100 years ago this past June, has much to offer his Republican party in these days of tumult and drama.
When President Warren G. Harding died in August 1923, Calvin Coolidge took over. Then in 1924, he was elected in his own right.
Raised in the backcountry of Vermont, Coolidge embodied the simple values of hard work, modesty, public service and a positive attitude toward everyone. Cal was quiet, but he was prepared. In his brief autobiography, “Silent Cal” Coolidge praises his philosophy professor at Amherst College for instilling in him a deep regard for a meticulously pursued search for the truth in a world where the divine hand was always present.
Coolidge took a job in a law firm in Massachusetts and passed the bar based on his apprenticeship there. He knew business and municipal law from this practical base and served in many a public post until he was elected to Congress and then the governorship of Massachusetts.
He rose to national prominence in the decisive way he handled a police strike, his position being that public employees were too essential to the public welfare to merit the right to strike.
His Republican principles called for a small government, low public expenditures, and a hands-off attitude toward business. What would Calvin Coolidge have to say about the Republican Party that we see today?
Here are some of his words from his autobiography. They speak for themselves.
“I have often said that there was no cause for feeling disturbed at being misrepresented in the press. It would be only when they began to say things detrimental to me which were true that I should feel alarm.
“Perhaps one of the reasons I have been a target for so little abuse [in the press] is because I have tried to refrain from abusing other people.
“The words of a President have an enormous weight and should not be used indiscriminately.
“It would be exceedingly easy to set the country all by the ears and foment hatreds and jealousies, which, by destroying faith and confidence, would help nobody and harm everybody. The end would be the destruction of all progress.
“The only way I know to drive evil from the country is by the constructive method of filling it with good. The country is better off tranquilly considering its blessings and merits, and earnestly striving to secure more of them, that it would be in nursing hostile bitterness about the deficiencies and faults.
“Oftentimes trifling incidents, some insignificant action, an unfortunate phrase in an address, or an injudicious letter, a lack of patience towards someone who presents an impossible proposition, too much attention to one person, or too little courtesy towards another, become magnified into the sensation of the hour. While such events finally sink into their proper place in history as too small for consideration, if they occur frequently, they create an atmosphere of distraction that might seriously interfere with the conduct of public business which is really important.
“It was my desire to maintain about the White House as far as possible an attitude of simplicity and not engage in anything that had an air of pretentious display. That was my conception of the great office. It carries sufficient power within itself, so that it does not require any of the outward trappings of pomp and splendor for the purpose of creating an impression. It has a dignity of its own which makes it self-sufficient.
“Personal relations should be conducted at all times with decorum and dignity, and in accordance with the best traditions of polite society. But there is no need of theatricals.
“[Speechmaking] is very exacting. It requires the most laborious and extended research and study, and the most careful and painstaking thought. Each word has to be weighed in the realization that it is a Presidential utterance which will be dissected at home and abroad to discover is outward meaning and any possible hidden implications.”
Coolidge’s small government principles did nothing to forestall the Great Depression. Just before leaving office, however, he signed the biggest public works project in the world to build Hoover Dam.
He was an unassuming man imbued with steady dignity. Republicans, could we please have more Calvin Coolidge and less Donald Trump in your leadership?