Before the Twentieth Amendment changed Inauguration Day from its original March 4th to the current January 20th of the year following Presidential & Vice Presidential elections, incoming administrations delivered their addresses and took their constitutionally prescribed oaths on the fourth of this month. This changed in January 1937. Three more pairs of Presidential-Vice Presidential tickets would observe the original day after the one that took place yesterday one hundred years ago (Coolidge-Charles G. Dawes, Herbert Hoover-Charles Curtis, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt-John N. Garner). It was the the fourth preceding duo (Warren G. Harding & Calvin Coolidge) who took the oath and delivered their inaugural addresses in 1921. 

Coolidge, on the occasion of his oath, administered by friend and outgoing Vice President Thomas R. Marshall in the Senate Chamber, reflected deeply upon the institution of our branches of government, especially its bicameral National Legislature, the importance of having both bodies of deliberation, representing not only the people but also the States. The States were not, in his view, mere formulaic arms of the federal will. They were sovereigns in their own sacrosanct spheres. To Coolidge, both houses of Congress were genuinely vital safeguards to our constitutional system. 

Coolidge expressed it this way: 

“Five generations ago there was revealed to the people of this nation a new relationship between man and man, which they declared and proclaimed in the American Constitution. Therein they recognized a legislature empowered to express the will of the people in law, a judiciary required to determine and state such law, and an executive charged with securing obedience to the law, all holding their office, not by reason of some superior force, but through the duly determined conscience of their countrymen. 

“To the House, close to the heart of the nation, renewing its whole membership by frequent elections, representing directly the people, reflecting their common purpose, has been granted a full measure of the power of legislation and exclusive authority to originate taxation. To the Senate, renewing its membership by degrees, representing in part the sovereign States, has been granted not only a full measure of the power of legislation, but, if possible, far more important functions. 

“To it is entrusted the duty of review, that to negotiations there may be added ratification, and to appointment approval. Buts its greatest function of all, too little mentioned and too little understood, whether exercised in legislating or reviewing, is the preservation of liberty. Not merely the rights of the majority, they little need protection, but the rights of the minority, from whatever source they may be assailed. The great object for us to seek here, for the Constitution identifies the vice-presidency with the Senate, is to continue to make this chamber, as it was intended by the fathers, the citadel of liberty. An enormous power is here conferred, capable of much good or ill, open, it may be, to abuse, but necessary, wholly and absolutely necessary, to secure the required result. 

“Whatever its faults, whatever its human imperfections, there is no legislative body in history that has used its powers with more wisdom and discretion, more uniformly for the execution of the public will, or more in harmony with the spirit of the authority of the people which has created it, than the United States Senate. I take up the duties which the people have assigned me under the Constitution, which we can neither enlarge nor diminish, of presiding over this Senate, agreeably to its rules and regulations, deeply conscious that it will continue to function in harmony with its high traditions as a great deliberative body, without passion and without fear, unmoved by clamor, but most sensitive to the right, the stronghold of government according to law, that the vision of past generations may be more and more the reality of generations yet to come.” 

I have to admit, the collection of Bobblehead figures has never caught on with me. It may not approach the kitsch of “Dogs Playing Poker” (and its subsequent spinoffs) by that other Coolidge, Cassius Marcellus (begun when the future President was a junior in college), but nothing of the kind has ever crossed our threshold. That may change for this collector of all things Coolidge. The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame & Museum has been preparing to release a limited edition set of eighteen forgotten — several of whom are no less worthy — POTUSes (or is it POTOI?) in the coming months. I am particularly pleased to see that Calvin Coolidge is currently sold out. The figures are 8 inches tall. I am glad to see that the collection also includes Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William Howard Taft (likewise sold out), and Warren Harding. 

Perhaps a visit to (and purchase at) the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame & Museum website is in your future? 

“When Americans cease to admire Abraham Lincoln the Union which he perpetuated will be no more. The strongest proof of the continuance of this admiration is the ceaseless publication of books about him. His greatness increases with each exploration. It has not yet been bounded. The authority of his word grows with time. He spoke and lived the truth. 

“The practice of canonization is inherent in the human mind. Men of the past grow into giants, history takes the form of the good old days, all deeds become heroic. This has advantages, it is inspiring; but it is not human experience, and it is not true. There is too much written of what men think of Lincoln in proportion to that which tells what he was. He does not need to be glorified. That but degrades. To idealize him destroys him. The greatest inspiration his life can give is in the whole truth about him. Leave him as he is. He came from the soil, he was born of the people, he lived their life. To make it all heroic, like giving him drawing-room airs, destroys the mighty strength of his example…

“No man in American history, not even Washington, compares with Lincoln in dealing with the practical affairs of his day. He employed no magic. He was no visionary. He was no child of fortune. He was the creation of an adversity that walked hand in hand with him from the cradle to the grave. In that struggle he found his strength. He too grew in stature and in wisdom. Out of an experience of sorrow and pain he gained the power to look into the heart of things.

“For our burdens which he bore, for our sorrows which he comforted, for that character of surpassing strength and beauty, for the courage he showed, for the devotion to duty, for the patience, the hope, the steadfastness, for the new glory that his life revealed, for the immortal example of all that which we call Abraham Lincoln, men well may continue to study him, to love and praise him, and to give thanks for him to the Source of all power.” 

Calvin Coolidge, excerpt from The Preface to Carl Schurz’s Abraham Lincoln, An Essay (1920, Houghton Mifflin)