Mr. Hendrickson of the Tax Education Foundation (Iowa) has some very timely reminders from the steady fiscal restraint demonstrated by Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s. While America’s debt continues to climb, there remains a persistent aversion to dealing with it while at the same time a deeply-seated simplistic and unfounded fear that the 20s either have nothing to teach us or teach us only failure and disaster, encapsulated in the old, cliched catchphrases and campaign trail bogeymen of supposed “income inequality,” fake prosperity, and predestined crash.

While these myths have been addressed on this blog throughout the years, Mr. Hendrickson reminds us of a different lesson gleaned from the fiscal policy of Harding & Coolidge years: It took real work. As it has been easy to deride and caricature, we find the restraint shown by Harding and Coolidge was anything but easy, requiring instead intense focus and persistent effort. We mock that at our own peril. No one is seriously making the case that we can or should return to the 1920s, as if the whole slew of events that brought subsequent depression and suffering are directly attributable to the success of the Harding-Coolidge exercise of restraint. None of it was foregone, whatever “experts” claim.

Our mistake now, a short-sightedness that will reap far more catastrophic results, is in deriding those who had the discipline and perseverance to face squarely the debt problem, who demonstrated the will to oppose wasteful expenditure, and hold back the forces pandering to the “party cruise” mentality as it incessantly beat at the door through both administrations. The example of Harding and Coolidge to show restraint presents a reminder that peace and plenty are always fleeting but the nation is best prepared when it confronts its debt responsibly and redeems the time, when things are good, to set its house in order. The rain clouds will not be held back by our ambivalence. If we fail to learn from the success of their restraint, we cannot blame them for our neglect, we can only blame ourselves and the future will most certainly pay the price.

Harry Truman in 1948. Photo credit: Yousuf Karsh

At first glance, there do not appear to be many similarities between Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman. Coolidge would never be heard uttering the kind of salty language Truman frequently employed. Coolidge knew how to be crisp and to the point without the colorful metaphors. Both had a strong sense of the Presidential Office’s duty, however, and guarded fiercely his own moral integrity. Aside from the obvious differences of party and regional upbringing, they both came from the country. Even so, 1923 and 1945 (the years they ascended to the White House) were about as different as any separate worlds can be despite being a mere twenty-two years apart. Both men succeeded following the deaths of their predecessors and would win elections in their own right, the 1924 three-way contest remaining the more decisive of the two. They would both lead into a post-war world, facing the challenges and uncertainty of returning to peacetime. War broke out again under Truman while Coolidge kept the peace. They both used the veto and executive power in decisive ways, neither without controversy. For both of them, the “buck stopped at the President’s desk.” They did things differently, to be sure, possessing distinct styles of executive administration, but both could be as immovable as granite when duty required. They would both preside over significant reconstruction projects of the people’s White House, the introduction of a steel-beamed third floor in 1927 and the 1949-1952 renovation, which remains the most substantial work done since the mansion’s burning in 1814. Both were efforts to correct the unfortunate installation in 1902 of a second floor truss and its subsequent strain on the overall structure.

Though Coolidge and Truman apparently never met, they were being prepared for national leadership in different ways at the same time. Truman served as an artilleryman during the Great War and then ventured into haberdashery (his shop being hit by the 1921 depression) and then served as county judge before reaching the U.S. Senate while Coolidge was war-time governor of Massachusetts and then Vice President. Truman would enjoy a much longer post-presidency and yet both returned to the people from whom they came, quiet ‘Main Street’ America. While Coolidge left office adored by the people, it has been intellectuals who join in a chorus of hostility toward Cal while reserving accolades for Harry. Both were more alike than such academics usually countenance. Though, on the campaign trail, Truman helped echo this critical chord as a partisan candidate, I think even Harry learned to walk with greater perspective and a higher regard for his predecessors once he had also been there. They both knew the country could do just fine after their season of leadership had passed to others. They did not see themselves in any sense as indispensable forces. They were above all, thoroughly and authentically human. In one of those frequent points in history when only two former Presidents lived contemporaneously, the years 1924-1930 and 1945-1961 resemble each other. Truman would have the benefit of Hoover’s experience just as Coolidge had had from Taft before them. I think Harry now would find this animus against Coolidge has been unfair to #30 and be rightly repulsed by it. If nothing more, his sense of justice would find it intolerable. Not only this but, as his daughter once noted, Truman was an avid collector of Coolidge stories. He loved them. They were hilarious. They taught while they made you laugh.

Harry’s favorite was the old story about one of those mystifying pancake breakfasts Coolidge often held for legislators. The legislators never quite caught on to the rationale behind these breakfasts, failing to detect that Cal was taking his measure of them, sizing them up and seeing how they reacted, what made them tick, how they thought, how they worked and how they handled situations. Harry relished hearing and recounting the old instance when one of those legislators, Texas Senator Morris Sheppard, sat at table with a piece of bacon still lingering on his plate while Rob Roy, the ever-observant white collie, stared eagerly up at him. “He wants your bacon,” Cal cracked to Sheppard. The unsuspecting Sheppard gave it away and no new slice was forthcoming for the cajoled, but now baconless, Senator from Texas. In Aesop-like fashion: He gave too freely under pressure and illustrated that cautionary tale of legislators snookered by the lobbyist, even when it turns out that lobbyist is a dog.

Dempsey and Firpo (1924) by George Bellows

The Twenties remains one of the most vibrant eras of peacetime innovation, cultural achievement, and the leadership to embody it all in iconic personalities which now seemed larger and more glorious than the country — or the decade itself — could contain. The Twenties beheld legendary figures bestriding the world as they would cross a stage, humble but confident, reverent but restless with an energy to accomplish greater things than had ever before existed. Young heroes seemed to develop in abundance on several fronts. A shared cultural bond was emerging in pursuits that defied sectional isolation and narrow outlook ushered in through radio, the automobile, the telephone, the airplane and the camera.

It was a decade of transitions, as almost all decades are, but it was more than that. It was a decade of youthful exuberance and matured experience too but that simplifies the time. Few decades are so replete with pursuits that captured the imagination and encouraged a soar to the stars in the same breath. Lindbergh inspired the conquest of the air, looking forward to a day when we would cross continents in mere hours. Ford accelerated the conquest of the road, presaging a day when seeing the world would be opened to us by the automobile. AT&T was connecting the globe together around the telephone conversation. “Red” Grange was packing in stadiums to watch the new-found thrills of college football. Harold Lloyd was unleashing a subtle revolution in comedy and film itself. Radio was furnishing a cultural language too, programs anyone could access and enjoy. Newscasting had Graham McNamee.

America in the 1920s turned to sports with an enthusiasm that arguably rivals any other era. It sought out these athletic pursuits with a zeal that seemed long-bottled, hungering to do the incredible not with weapons of war but through the prowess of peaceful competition. It pitted wits and athletic abilities against each other to discover the best, confirming that triumph belonged to the winner not merely the participant. Everyone had his loyal fans. It was no less spirited and had its own violent collisions but it gave place and esteem to the victors of the ball field and champions of court and ring. Baseball had its Ruth. Football its Rockne. Golf its Bobby Jones. Tennis its Bill Tilden.

When it came to boxing, it was Jack Dempsey. His successor and rival for the title, Gene Tunney, would likewise receive wide accolades, including a visit to the White House to meet President Coolidge. That would all come later. First, however, it was Jack Dempsey, who would hold the heavyweight title for seven years. Long before Rocky Marciano, it was Dempsey who would earn glory through some 75 fights, losing only 6 of them. Defeating Jess Willard in 1919 for the title, Dempsey would go on to successfully defend it five more times, most notably against French Georges Carpentier in 1921 and Argentine Luis Firpo in 1924.

Jack Dempsey and manager “Doc” Kearns posing for photographers at the White House, 1924. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

In 1924, he would meet his third President, Calvin Coolidge. He had already met Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding. Here is Dempsey’s honest account of that memorable meeting with Cal. It illustrates the maxim that the first impression rarely captures the whole picture:

“I saw a lot of pictures of Coolidge in the newspapers before I met him. He ought to sue every photographer in the United States. The first time I saw his picture, I thought: ‘There’s a man I wouldn’t trade horses with, for he’d trim me.’ I don’t mean he’d cheat me, but I’d get the worst of it. He looked, in the pictures, like a man who was sly and foxy and sour.

“He reminded me, in his pictures, of sitting around a stove in a grocery store in the country in the winter time, and swapping talk and chewing tobacco, and in comes the shrewdest, smartest farmer in the county, and everybody respects him, but you can’t like him much, for even when he smiles his face is too shrewd and foxy.

“Well, when I met the President it was a kind of shock, for he’s different. He’s kind of like his pictures, yet he’s not like them at all. That smile that looks so sour in the photographs has got something good and straight about it that seems to come from his eyes, if you know what I mean.

“After I saw him and talked with him, I wouldn’t have been afraid to take him on in a horse trade unless I had it up my sleeve to trim him, and then I’d been afraid of it. He’d be honest, but you couldn’t fool him, and when he’d get mean he’d awful mean. I guess maybe that’s a pretty good sort of man to have running the country.

“We didn’t really say much to each other. Kearns and I went to the White House, and the President’s secretary, Mr. Slemp, introduced us, and I guess I felt a little awkward, and Mr. Coolidge smiled — believe me, it’s a different smile than you expect from his pictures — and shook hands with me, and said:

‘Well, Mr. Dempsey, you’re a creditable champion, and you’re a more popular man than I am.’

“I said, ‘Well, sir, I don’t see how a man could be more popular than to be President of the United States.’

“Then we talked for a few minutes about boxing. Slemp told him I could knock out a man with a two-inch punch — that’s what they said when I went to a scientific laboratory and punched a machine that registered on a dial, but I doubt if it would be true in the ring — and Mr. Coolidge grinned and said, ‘Well, that’s two inches more of a punch that I’d like to get from you.’ And we talked a little more and shook hands and said goodbye.”

It is noteworthy that the 1920s claims so many heroes of culture. It was an era when winning honestly was given due praise, dishonesty due shame, and the development of culture over and above that of politics mattered much more to regular people. That healthy balance was just how Cal would have wanted it.