“I shall, if they get excited”

November 6, 2013November 7, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

A mistaken impression can sometimes be left by historians regarding Coolidge’s attitude on civility. Some seem to think that civility is incompatible with any form of political confrontation, even employing Coolidge as the symbol of a civil discourse and non-controversial comportment. Coolidge possessed very unpopular convictions at times and made controversial stands throughout his life. His refusal to allow Boston strike leaders to return to the police force is one such example. Coolidge’s overhaul of his state’s administrative agencies, reforming 120 into 19 departments was another potential political powder keg he embraced. His adept use of the veto and appointment powers furnish more controversial examples. Instead, the “need for civility” plea, principally coming from the establishments of both parties, being the biggest violators of the rule, tend to use it in order to convince conservatives they need to sit down and quietly consent to whatever happens, for the good of the country and the Party.

It is as if Coolidge never tolerated heated exchanges or passionate debate between opposing sides. In reality, he did more than that, knowing such controversy did not warrant wringing hands over the Republic’s future from the “tone” of partisan bickering. The parties were supposed to be partisan. As he once wrote, someone has to be partisan or else no one can be independent. Partisanship itself was not inherently detrimental because it was through the party system that public policy is discussed and upon which the welfare of everyone is deliberated. Partisanship could be abused, as with anything else, but it was not intrinsically one of the “deadly sins.” Sound conclusions emerge when opposing political principles are free to clash in public discussion. When government becomes too bipartisan, collaborating with unchallenged conformity, the checks and balances of our system are allowed to erode, crowding out both the well-being of all Americans and their freedom to govern themselves.

For Vice President Coolidge, during the summer of 1921, in his first few months as presiding officer of the Senate, an intense back-and-forth between Missouri Democrat James Reed and North Dakota Republican Porter McCumber unfolded before his eyes. As the political exchange turned into blunter rhetoric, accusing the other of being a “liar” and inviting his adversary to “step outside,” the visitors up in the gallery and other Senators chimed in.

Coolidge sat unfazed, calmly and collectedly, as the “coolest” tempered man in the room. Despite the growing din in the hall accompanied by the urgings of a fellow Republican to call everyone to order, Coolidge knew a use of the gavel was unnecessary. It was not detrimental to halt this “teachable moment” on the differences between party principles or to shut down the emotional banter. Both served a purpose in our system. Undiluted civility was strong enough to withstand partisan rhetoric. It could do so as long as an honest press remained free and the people were informed with the truth. It was at this moment that Coolidge gave expression to his legendary dry wit. The Vice President turned to the Republican and remarked, with the straightest of faces, “I shall, if they get excited.”

On Political Strategy

November 5, 2013November 6, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

While the White House has become ensnared in its own deceptive assurances regarding “Obamacare,” the agenda has decisively been brought to a halt. The strategy was not supposed to derail, certainly never like this. Washington as well as the rest of the country, including the Republican establishment, have had time to reflect upon their actions during the “shutdown,” the debt limit increase and the response to the filibuster led by Ted Cruz. Some have come home to their districts and visited with constituents on the political condition and where to go from here.

The answer, in truth, is typically not what much of the establishment claims it to be. Rather than recognize these circumstances as an opportunity to inform constituents (now that real people are suffering all across the country because of this destructive law) and then to provide principled leadership, leadership made possible by a handful of conservatives, far too many Republicans are rushing back to the “safety” of timidity and defeatism. The effort was “doomed to fail,” they echo, being embarrassed by Ted Cruz and those who engaged in such a vain hope of success because the votes were not “there.” Yet, see what has resulted from standing firm anyway! “Party unity” coupled with “civility” are what we need, they claim. We need to pick our fights, they assert. We need to agree on the “big votes” while not alienating independents. That strategy certainly worked well for our last presidential nominee.

No one back home is advocating disunity, incivility or selective opposition. These are strategies practiced by the establishment. This is where the divide originates. Instead, the disunity and incivility comes from senior leadership in both parties calling conservatives “wacko birds,” “terrorists” and “hijackers,” blaming the Tea Party movement for the failures of Washington.

We are the ones expected to “tone down our rhetoric” with a return to “civility” — which is simply another way of silencing dissent against the “normal” dysfunction of Washington. Our “rhetoric” is nothing more than reasonable opposition to the way Washington operates, with its lawless disregard and devotion to expediency. Our public gatherings, on the other hand, are clean, wholesome and respectful. We consistently leave the places we gather better than we found them. Contrast this with the coercive conduct of Park service authorities, condescension of Congressional and Executive branch officials and the destructiveness of “Occupy Wall Street” mobs.

We are the ones expected to rally for the good of the Party — while Senate and House leaders jettison any vestige of effort to stand for something non-negotiable whether the “votes are there” or not. It is the establishment that has publicly ostracized anyone bold enough to articulate our convictions.

We, on the other hand, are trying to preserve the Party’s principles rather than see them auctioned off by our representatives who believe their role is to bridge the differences and compromise with a deliberately destructive agenda. Liberty and the people are the ones who lose each time.

We are assured that the wise course is to pick our fights. We do not have the votes to get everything we want, it is noted. True, the Senate and White House are held by Democrats. But how powerful an impact one man, Senator Cruz, has had not only on strategy but the entire political situation. None of us are under the illusion that we can win every fight. We simply expect our “side” to fight.

By virtue of resisting the policies and ideology of government-run health care, without any incivility or divisiveness, conservatives have stopped the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the President and his Party, setting all of Washington on its heels. Now even Democrats are seeking a delay of the individual mandate. Conservatives changed the “rules of the game” because they stood on what is right, not on what was politically calculated to succeed. Everyone considered it a foregone conclusion they would accomplish nothing, including many on their own side. They accomplished more by standing for principles than anyone could have imagined. The results are still unfolding. In a very powerful way, they exemplified a strategy cherished by none other than Calvin Coolidge.

Coolidge explains in his Autobiography how vain and self-defeating were the efforts to politically outsmart the opposing side with some intricate calculation of timing and set of perceptions. Instead, he kept a very different principle. “There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.” What motivated Coolidge to act was the force of right. The pursuit of what is right, rather than any grand scheme to oppose measures only when the support is there distinguishes those who adhere to principles from those who subsist on what is convenient at the moment. We fight because the cause is moral and good. We do not hold back until overwhelming support is already behind us among our peers. Leadership, as Coolidge maintained, requires the principled judgment of the representative, living up to one’s oath, executing the office “faithfully and impartially” in agreement with the Constitution and our laws. The uninformed voter does not relieve the representative from the duty of educating and leading with sound principles, just to avoid the risk of losing the next election.

Coolidge, whether as legislator, Governor or President, acted with firm reliance on doing what was right whatever the cost to him politically. He had no respect for the strategy that raises finger to the wind and votes for what has the least resistance and most support in polling. “Any one with a little experience can tell them in advance that the effect of action based on such motives will always be bad…That is the reason why those who seek popularity so seldom find it, while those who follow an informed conscience so often are astonished by a wide public approval.” Having a majority of votes no more justifies action than does transforming the entire country for a resentful minority. It is this strategy: simply doing what is right because it is right, whatever the political ramifications, that will ultimately vindicate those with the courage of convictions, who stood when it was hardest to do so. Meanwhile, those who have lived by the rule of expediency, gauging every word or act by its popularity, will find vain irrelevance as the price of compromise.

The victory of what is good and right only comes to those who fight for it. If we wait to fight the good fight another day over the issues that “really matter,” we will soon find so much territory has been relinquished to what is wrong that our last opportunity to oppose it when we should have is forever lost. As Coolidge understood, relying on anything less than the right, the honest and the true is no wise or sound strategy at all. Defeat is sure when we never step onto the field. Our confidence can only reside in defending the rightness of our principles be it popular or unpopular, entrusting the outcome, and our consciences, to God.

On “The Duties of Citizenship”

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 5 Comments

Dr. Thomas Sowell

While not a November during an election year, it is fitting that Thomas Sowell, one of America’s preeminent economic minds, presented the contrasts in policy and attitude that set Calvin Coolidge far ahead of the current White House occupant. It is appropriate mainly because on this day eighty-nine years ago, the President “wired up” on radio broadcast to speak about the responsibilities every citizen possesses. He did not lecture them on the need for sacrifice in the form of higher taxes, less freedom and more supervision. He did not appeal to a prejudice against American traditions and institutions. He did not stir up resentment for the opposition party in order to keep the agenda rolling. Instead he appealed to confidence in the people, not Washington bureaucrats, to decide rightly what needs to be done.

“The institutions of our country rest upon faith in the people. No decision that the people have made in any great crisis has ever shown that faith in them has been misplaced. It is impossible to divorce that faith which we have in others from the faith which we have in ourselves.” Coolidge was not talking about a communal reliance, that subjugates the rights and blessings of the individual to that of an amorphous collective. He explains what citizenship requires, “Unless each of us is determined to meet the duty that comes to us, we can have no right to expect that others will meet the duties that come to them. Certainly we cannot expect them so to act as to save us from the consequences of having failed to act.” To Coolidge, citizenship was of always personal. It was never a requirement imposed upon others that exempted yourself. If you failed to uphold your obligations to participate — from the ballot box to the town meeting to the daily exercise of obedience to law — who were you to expect it of someone else? How can you expect the proverbial “someone else” to pay for a program you want, if you are unwilling to pay for it yourself? How can you decry the results of an election or a failed policy if you have been complacent or negligent as anything less than an energetic and active citizen?

The result of opting out of one’s citizenship obligations was plain in a country where the people are supposed to be sovereign. “If they do not vote they abdicate that sovereignty, and they may be entirely sure that if they relinquish it other forces will seize it, and if they fail to govern themselves some other power will rise up to govern them. The choice is always before them–whether they will be slaves or whether they will be free.” To retain freedom, Coolidge declared, there can be no substitute for the active and energetic exercise of citizenship’s privileges coupled with a faithful discharge of its duties. “It is not to be secured by passive resistance. It is the result of energy and action.” Bad policies do not go away on their own. They are defeated by informed and engaged citizens. Action alone would not suffice, however. The President continued, “To live up to the full measure of citizenship in this nation requires not only action, but it requires intelligent action. It is necessary to secure information and to acquire education.” The two principal places for this intelligence in the electorate are the school house and the house of worship. The moral and intellectual training in citizenship is grounded here. These are to prepared each person for the purpose of a campaign: to send an informed individual to the ballot box. All the money, advertising, organization, speeches, effort are utterly wasted if anything less than informed and engaged citizens vote when the day comes.

The decision before all of us, this year, next year and at every policy proposal, is “whether we wish to be ruled by all the people or a part of the people, by the minority or the majority; whether we wish our elections to be dominated by those who have been misled, through the presentation of half-truths, into the formation of hasty, illogical and unsound conclusions; or whether we wish those to determine the course of our Government who have through due deliberation and careful consideration of all the factors involved reached a sound and mature conclusion.” A discontented few were active then no less than now. They only changed the country’s direction not because they were right or advocated just causes against the majority of Americans but because “a sober second thought” exercised by the people for their welfare and that of future generations “sat out” from their duty to participate. Our country was never meant to be directed and its policies decided by a “minority moved in part by self-interest and prejudice.” The faith that cements our foundations was not entrusted to a part of the people, Coolidge affirmed. “It means faith in all the people. Our country is always safe when decisions are made by a majority of those who are entitled to vote. It is always in peril when decisions are made by a minority.” That minority, be it an autocratic President, a Cabinet member permitted plenary power, a presumptive Supreme Court justice or a club of incumbent Senators, was not given the power they now exercise by our system as founded. It is a corruption to behave as it did. Even more, though, we have been seriously remiss in our duties to allow this wholesale abdication of our sovereignty to take place. Those we send to our county seats, state capitals and Washington serve, not for themselves, but as our employees. They work for us. Yet, we ourselves are but stewards and, as Coolidge would say, “trustees” exercising citizenship for the “benefit of…country and…countrymen.” We are no more at leisure to sanction policies, by vote or abstention, that favor a few while hurting others than are those we send to represent us in government.

Coolidge brings his radio message to a close with a firm rebuke of complacency toward our duties of citizenship. “They have no right to say they do not care. They must care. They have no right to say that whatever the result of the election they can get along. They must remember that their country and their countrymen cannot get along, cannot remain sound, cannot preserve its institutions, cannot protect its citizens, cannot maintain its place in the world, unless those who have the right to vote do sustain and do guide the course of public affairs by the thoughtful exercise of that right…They do not hold a mere privilege to be exercised or not, as passing fancy may move them.” This great trust charged to each of us, “one of the most important and most solemn which can be given into the keeping of an American citizen,” warrants the thoughtful seriousness worthy of its importance.

Last year we witnessed the product of an uninformed and complacent citizenry and the whole country now suffers for a vast disengagement and ignorance. We dare not repeat that costly mistake by continuing to be inactive and uninformed, forsaking our duty to be citizens, in choosing the candidates and direction America is to take in the primaries and general elections coming in the months to follow.