Section 1 of Article II of the Constitution prescribes the oath each President is to promise and observe as he carries out the responsibilities of his office, ‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’
When the occasion arose to succeed the President in the early hours of the morning on August 3, 1923, Coolidge did not have to consult a team of legal experts or “brainstorm” with Cabinet members over the telephone about what comes next. He simply consulted the Constitution which sat on his father’s bookshelf and found the oath to be taken by the President, the same he had affirmed over two years before. The answer, to anyone able to read and understand, was accessible simply by looking at the Constitution, our blueprint and road-map.
“Having found this form in the Constitution I had it set up on the typewriter and the oath was administered by my father in his capacity as a notary public, an office he had held for a great many years.”
When it came to the Constitution, Coolidge’s grasp of its power and clarity is no less essential a message for the current President than it has been for the previous forty-three,
…[T]he President exercises his authority in accordance with the Constitution and the law. He is truly the agent of the people, performing such functions as they have entrusted to him. The Constitution specifically vests him with the executive power. Some presidents have seemed to interpret that as an authorization to take any action which the Constitution, or perhaps the law, does not specifically prohibit. Others have considered that their powers extended only to such acts as were specifically authorized by the Constitution and the statutes…This has always seemed to me to be a hypothetical question, which it would be idle to attempt to determine in advance. It would appear to be the better practice to wait to decide each question on its merits as it arises…
Coolidge is not sanctioning an improvisational Presidency employing situational compliance with the Constitution and our laws as it suits the individual. He makes that plain with what he says in the very next paragraph.
For all ordinary occasions the specific powers assigned to the President will be found sufficient to provide for the welfare of the country. That is all he needs. All situations that arise are likely to be simplified, and many of them completely solved, by an application of the Constitution and the law. If what they require to be done, is done, there is no opportunity for criticism, and it would be seldom that anything better could be devised…by simply finding out what the law required (The Autobiography, pp.200-202, emphasis added).
Office holders today, whatever level of importance, would do well to take their oath with the same seriousness of mind and reverence for duty that Coolidge held for it.
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On Being Worthy of Freedom
Apprehensions over the future have always remained an ever-present concern for a wise and circumspect people. When Americans stop being concerned for the next generation, it will be because we are no longer free individuals. The prospects for freedom stand in greater doubt than perhaps they have for many years, but a lack of confidence in our system is only new to us, not to generations of Americans who came before us.
Any one of the hardships overcome by prior generations could have halted the experiment of self-government in its tracks. It has certainly had no shortage of critics who proclaimed “failure” and “defeat” only to be proven flatly wrong time and time again. Inequity and unfairness have been present in human history from the outset, but neither has had the power to prevent individuals of determination from accomplishing truly great things despite it. Our time is hardly the first to ask, “who is worthy of freedom?”
The Progressive Era produced an almost overwhelming array of reasons to change the way this country was established. It would answer our question with pessimism: the people were ultimately not to be trusted with freedom. It was an intelligent few who merited such power. Coolidge knew, on the other hand, freedom was safest in the hands of the people.
The charge that our system was both too wild and too unequal, compared to the “enlightened” societies of Europe, led to calls for regulation of human behavior on a scale never before known. The pursuit began to implement an efficient and intelligent approach to government that would mitigate risk, remove inequities and shepherd the people to progress.
These activists, predisposed to intense skepticism about capitalist systems, trusted government implicitly with greater and greater control. Enamored with a lopsided admiration for methods foreign to American ideals of law and liberty, these generally middle class intellectuals failed to appreciate the remarkable nature of our constitutional system. They overlooked the careful balance worked out by the Framers, infusing a disastrous measure of good intentions with a reckless accumulation of new laws.
They entrusted government with the power to supply the shortfalls of human nature with legislation. Each effort undervalued, even ignored, the unquantifiable worth of freedom. Government, endeavoring to be “smart” and “humane,” hurt those it proclaimed to help by robbing them of the dignity of free will, the moral judgment of those given sovereignty in our system.
Ours is a history of accomplishment and success because people were recognized not as subjects in service to the State but individuals whose value comes from a Divine Creator. Made in the image of God, it logically follows that the dreams, aspirations and abilities to create, construct and succeed are within every person’s power. It is that power now being denied our young people as unrealistic and unattainable. This is nothing more than the latest incarnation of those who denied Edison could harness light, the Wrights could fly and Ford could mobilize America.
The avoidable tragedy of all this is that it literally destroys the wholesome yearnings of millions for something better than marginal existence. Instead, the young are told to be content with mediocrity, cease the pursuit of success, and consign all future faith and hopes to Washington’s management. No less self-deluded than the Progressives of Coolidge’s day, this operation dehumanizes humanity. History proclaims it will ultimately fail but the cost to countless lives in the process can never be known.
Coolidge, grappling with these problems, said in 1923,
[T}he motive power of progress and reform has not come from the high and mighty but from the mass of the people…It is not the quantity of knowledge that is the chief glory of man…It is in the moral power to know the truth and respond to it, to resist evil and hold to that which is good, that is to be found the real dignity and worth, the chief strength, the chief greatness. This power, even in the humblest and the most unlettered, rises to a height which cannot be measured, which cannot be analyzed. It is this strength of the people which can never be ignored. Of course it would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it; they pay the penalty. But compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant…
…Unless the people struggle to help themselves, no one else will or can help them. It is out of such struggle that there comes the strongest evidence of their true independence and nobility, and there is struck off a rough and incomplete economic justice, and there develops a strong and rugged national character. It represents a spirit for which there could be no substitute. It justifies the claim that they are worthy to be free…
…Civilization and freedom have come because they are an achievement, and it is human nature to achieve. Nothing else gives any permanent satisfaction. But most of all there is need of religion. From that source alone came freedom. Nothing else touches the soul of man. Nothing else justifies faith in the people.
Like the generation who saw beyond the narrow confines of subsistence imposed upon it by king and Parliament, it is time to refuse to participate in a supervised decline. Being taught to doubt our own judgment is merely a prelude to forfeiting the ability to make our own choices, to strive, to fail, to triumph — in short, to live free. If we are to be worthy of that freedom, we cannot surrender to this latest effort — however organized it is — to train out the moral ideals and intangible dreams of people.
On Responsible Governing
“When you substitute patronage for patriotism, administration breaks down. We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight” — Calvin Coolidge, September 1916, from full speech in Have Faith in Massachusetts, p.46.
While Coolidge was specifically addressing his state’s departure from a responsible exercise of civic obligation toward the sick, poor, and mentally infirm, the “unfortunates” were not being helped by a system that rewarded the appearance of caring over substantive actions. As he had said two years before, “The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support…Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue…Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”
Coolidge was incensed by the partisan posture that passed laws, rewarded political friends and manifested “compassion” based on the electoral calendar. This utter abandonment of responsible governance is being repeated today. State legislators, like those in Wisconsin, have skipped borders to avoid voting on public expenditure cuts. Other states, like California, are assuming greater and greater control of the cities against those of other citizens in the towns and countryside. Cities, like Detroit, are filing bankruptcy because local government has forfeited the future by spending gratuitously on political favorites rather than serving all its people with constructive economy and limited regulation. The federal government has not passed a budget for four years, yet has spent more than $10 trillion through continuing resolutions, administrative subterfuge and unprecedented disregard of the laws.
The postponement of yet another provision of Obamacare, this time the full brunt of premium costs, at least until after the midterm elections, is just the kind of “Show Window” partisanship Coolidge found abhorrent in 1916. This postponement of an already unpopular, unaffordable and unworkable law is calculated for one purpose: to benefit the President and his Party in the next election. Such blatant manipulation of government to serve its own ends rather than those which genuinely benefit all the people deserves loud and wide rebuke. Next year’s ballot box affords a direct opportunity to turn out against this reckless system and for responsible governance.
The Importance of the Obvious 