“It isn’t”

November 17, 2013November 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 10 Comments

The Massachusetts General Court was in the midst of debate on a bill that drew spirited support from one especially long-winded legislator. He elaborated each point of the legislation and detailed its merits. Having introduced each argument for it with the affirmation, “It is,” the legislator was sure he had thoroughly made his case to the House.

Then Representative Coolidge was given the floor. He stood up and, with the room absolutely quiet, replied, “Mr. Speaker: It isn’t,” immediately sitting back down. A relieved House went up with laughter.

Needless to say, for all the words spent on the bill by the previous legislator, Coolidge’s simple refutation illustrates how the true course to follow is often the most direct, forthright and obvious. It does not take an expert to discern truth for us, it is within everyone’s reach to see and understand it. The bill died upon call of the roll.

On Where “the Buck Stops”

November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 15 Comments

Municipal law had been flagrantly disregarded. Upwards of one hundred thousand people were seriously inconvenienced by the city of Salem ignoring the law that prohibited the running of jitneys, the old term for bus taxis, on the streets. Driving street cars (which ran on rails) from usage, jitney operators were in violation of the law. Both the city and rail trustees were allowing the law to be fudged, bent and manipulated provision by provision as circumstances allowed.

The Governor, duly authorized by prior law to intervene in such circumstances, did so decisively. He instructed the directors of street car companies that the law was not ambiguous at all. Nor would he alter it to fit ever-changing circumstances. The law placed street cars in Salem, and forbade jitneys. To disobey the law, even by city officials, was wrong and needed to stop. The city of Salem would have to to amend city code by legislative council, not executive alteration. The Governor boldly told them so, adding that he would exercise his lawful authority to deploy State police to enforce the law if city officers failed to do their duty.

One man stood up, “If you do that,” he threatened, “the labor people will go into ever town of the State and crucify you politically.” The man went on, becoming even more explicit in what would happen to the Governor if he followed through with his words. Was the Governor cowed by the prospect of losing everything politically? Hennessy recounts what happened next. “The Governor patiently listened for a while, and then broke in, with a drawl that convulsed the listeners and embarrassed the speaker…” (Calvin Coolidge, pp.112-113).

He said, “Don’t let me deter you. Go right ahead.” The threat died in its tracks.

As the meeting dragged on longer and longer, another official complained, “well, about all we have done so far is pass the buck.”

To that the Governor looked straight at the speaker and declared, “Try it on me. I won’t pass the buck.”

The Governor would not be intimidated by either electoral consequences or attempts to sidestep the law to get instant results. Nor would he concoct a fictional third person to whom he could pin all political liabilities and deficiencies if something went wrong. “I won’t pass the buck,” he announced. Not “we” or “my team” but “I won’t pass the back.” It was he alone who would uphold the law, even if no one else did. The responsibility of governing meant more than the outcome of any election. It was to be executed faithfully in obedience to the law, as that law is the duly enacted will of the people through their representatives.

The Governor had no more right to create new laws than did the city of Salem to rewrite by arbitrary action what the law allowed today, changing it to fit what may happen tomorrow. Our system, to remain free, must have continuity and reliability. If it is constantly transforming at the whim of executive power, it is no longer the law but lawlessness, a mockery of constitutional government. “The law,” as the Governor would say, “changed and changeable on slight provocation, loses its sanctity and authority.”

The Governor, Calvin Coolidge, could not be more right.

On Democrat Party Promises

November 12, 2013November 13, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

A Massachusetts newspaperman, a Republican, once recounted this boyhood memory for then-Governor Coolidge, during one of their conversations on Beacon Hill:

“When I was a boy in Springfield, another youngster met me on the street one day and asked me whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I said I didn’t know and asked what difference it made. ‘Well,’ said the other boy, ‘if you are a Democrat you can march in our torchlight parade and come up to my father’s flag-raising and have some ice cream.’ I replied, ‘All right, I’m a Democrat.’ So you see,” the chagrined newspaper told Governor Coolidge, “I sold my first vote to the Democratic Party for a dish of ice cream.”

“Well,” Coolidge shrewdly replied, “you got more than some of the Democrats get” (Whiting, President Coolidge: A Contemporary Estimate, p.60).

Democrats making grand promises, benefiting a select few at the top, is not new; neither is buying support with those promises. Aptly did Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., JFK’s father, warn against what he coined “Santa Claus” government where the individual is held in “slavish dependence” to the state (Stoll, JFK, Conservative, p.10). The glue of that dependence is, as Coolidge underscores, the long history of unquestioned yet unfulfillable assurances made by Democrats. The problem this time is not that another Democrat has been caught making impossible guarantees to buy or keep votes. The problem now is that a President knowingly repeated a criminally fraudulent claim on which millions relied — a promise essential to the passage of a law that has destroyed the economy, taken over the health care industry, led directly to the cancellations of millions of people’s plans, driven up costs for everyone, forced competent doctors from the field, obligated not just 5% of the population but the entire country with trillions of dollars in generational debt, and secured his re-election thereby so that the controls assumed because of his promise can be cemented permanently into American life. After all, no government program ever goes away, regardless of the depth of its failure.

It illustrates that some habits never change. Democrats appealed to the lowest desires even then. We all want ice cream but are we prepared to pay what it is already costing each of us in the freedom to choose, the say over our own government, our morality, human dignity, and the realization of each person’s fullest potential, when left unshackled by government “help”?