On Being Calvin Coolidge

October 31, 2013December 26, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

While recent years have produced some fine performances of Lincoln, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and other “big names” in Presidential history, the thirtieth President and his beloved First Lady are not without a list of impersonators. Here Herbert A. Turner of Cohasset, deliberately emulating President Coolidge, campaigns through Quincy during the 1924 campaign.

For the President’s security, a body double was used from time to time. This man hailed from Springfield, Massachusetts.

Of course, Grace had a body double also. This woman was from Boston.

Then there were those, like actor Lucien Littlefield, who were persuaded to pose as the President after a fellow cast member observed the resemblance to Coolidge while they filmed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1927. Littlefield gladly obliged to be Calvin Coolidge for the photographer.

Since then, Ian Wolfe took up the role of President Coolidge in The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell in 1955. Wolfe had portrayed a Chief Executive eight years before in California (1947), playing James K. Polk.

In 1979, a TV mini-series called Backstairs at the White House depicted life through eight administrations, including a brief look at the Coolidge era. Ed Flanders played the President and Lee Grant Mrs. Coolidge.

Last, but by far, the best portrayal of being Calvin Coolidge belongs to Jim Cooke. Having studied “Silent Cal” so devotedly over four decades, he proves how worthy his subject is for a renewed appreciation, perhaps now more than ever. He is not merely “another impersonator” but is a teacher, a dear friend and a good man. There is no quantifying the good influence he continues to exemplify for me and many others, through keeping the flame lit for so undeservedly an underrated President. His “More Than Two Words” presentation of a not-so-silent Cal restores a “lost” and worthy chapter of our history from an institutionalized neglect in far too many history classes. Please visit his fascinating page at http://www.crankyyankees.net.

On Government in Business

October 30, 2013October 30, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 2 Comments

The White House, over the past couple days, has gone in a direction that vividly illustrates why government does not belong in business. Beginning first with Valerie Jarrett’s tweet, then Jay Carney’s press conference, followed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ testimony before Congress and now President Obama’s speech at Fanueil Hall in Boston, all attribute the broken promises and failures of “Obamacare” to those irresponsible insurance companies who took their products out of the market. It is not the fault of government for first getting involved in business, they claim. The utter disingenuousness of this claim vindicates what former President Coolidge wrote in 1931 as he observed the same phenomenon by a Washington incessantly intervening in commerce,

“Another proposal to be made in the name of relieving unemployment will undoubtedly be an extension of government ownership. Healthy and normal employment consists of serving another for his personal satisfaction or profit. As the government is not personal, its proper business employment would be for those serving for its profit…For the wage earners to benefit in time of general depression it would be necessary to assume that government ownership would prevent fluctuations in the business in which it engages…” As the post office makes clear even now, that never happens. Conditions are anything but stable after government takes over.

“It is assumed,” Coolidge continued, “that payment of wages will go on without work, that is not employment, but relief. Then no one should work.” Any system relying on the work of a few to support the many cannot, nor ought, to succeed. It places an immoral burden on the individual to work that others may reap the rewards of his labor. In another era, that was not known as progress, nor even liberalism, but it was nothing less than slavery.

Finally, the insightful Mr. Coolidge comes to the heart of the issue: “The government has never shown much aptitude for real business.” The challenge of providing a competitive good or service, operating from a profit, making payroll, acquiring the best equipment, cutting expenses and hiring qualified people have never been concerns to government. It can ignore all of these components and still levy more taxes to cover its waste and pass stricter regulations to change the “rules of the game,” at its convenience.

Instead, Coolidge reminds his readers, “The most free, progressive and satisfactory method ever devised for the equitable distribution of property is to permit the people to care for themselves by conducting their own business. They have more wisdom than any government.”

The actions of insurance companies have not occurred in a vacuum. They directly correlate to what the White House has forced on everyone, outside the favored few. The administration’s latest string of ignorant invectives against business underscores yet again how little government understands about operating a company in the market and how much they are counting on our cluelessness when it comes to its oppressive involvement in the economy.

On Presidential Knowledge

October 29, 2013November 4, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 4 Comments

Former President Coolidge, looking back on his administration, once told Bruce Barton, “The President shouldn’t do too much. And he shouldn’t know too much.” When Barton’s curiosity was peaked, the former Chief Executive explained what he meant.

“The President can’t resign,” Mr. Coolidge answered, “If a member of the Cabinet makes a mistake and destroys his standing with the country, he can get out, or the President can ask him to get out. But if he has involved the President in the mistake, the President has to stay there to the end of his term, and to that extent the people’s faith in their Government has been diminished.”

Coolidge, never one to abide abuse of power or duty, would have seen a Presidential resignation as thwarting the people’s faith in their electoral choices and the confidence their representative system deserved. The price must be paid in a President finishing his term. The Constitution also provided for impeachment and removal but resignation was no viable “third solution” to Coolidge. The critical deficit of faith in our form of Government that followed Nixon’s resignation in 1974 is precisely what Coolidge forecast to Barton. The harm to the people, the country as a whole and the Presidential Office by Nixon’s decision, with all its attending results in subsequent years, is still being paid for in the present day. Even so, Coolidge was neither defending an absentee approach nor claiming it is okay to be an “empty suit,” oblivious to what is going on around him.

The problem, as Coolidge plainly summarized, was not in being completely unaware of what was transpiring on his watch but knowing too much. He elaborated, “I constantly said to my Cabinet: ‘There are many things you gentlemen must not tell me. If you blunder, you can leave, or I can invite you to leave. But if you draw me into all your department decisions and something goes wrong, I must stay here. And by involving me you have lowered the faith of the people in their Government.’ “

Coolidge, despite what “New Deal” writers claim, knew what was going on during his Administration, from the trivial to the consequential. He kept an ear to the ground while exercising the discipline of reserve, never volunteering that he did, in fact, know. When it became known among the ladies of Washington that Alice Roosevelt was expecting, Grace (having forgotten to ask when) was amazed to discover that Calvin already knew. When a confidential message regarding an American ambassador’s criminal conduct came across the wire, Chief Yardley, the head of that particular Bureau, learned of the document after it had already been found by Coolidge and forwarded on to the Justice Department for action outside of his office. When a letter from Lloyd George arrived addressed to Coolidge while he was staying in Plymouth for a few days in 1926, he responded to handle the situation right away without waiting to get back to Washington and reply, as he usually did, through his Secretary of State.

Coolidge remained entirely in charge of the Executive Branch. There was no doubt that he knew what was occurring in fulfillment of his responsibilities as its presiding officer. He did not do the work of his Cabinet officers or Bureau chiefs, never allowing himself to be involved in the decision-making of each department, but he knew what they were doing all the same.

When President Truman declared, “The Buck Stops Here,” he was striking upon the same principle in a different form. Whereas the President ought to know, and is ultimately responsible, it preserves the integrity of the people’s confidence in their republican system to expect that those whom the President chooses to serve as his Cabinet officers and leaders in his subordinate departments must do their work competently and faithfully. If the President has to get involved, it announces to the world that those under him are unfit and unqualified for the task. It was a sign of weakness and failure should the President have to assume the powers belonging to other officers. It brought down the high dignity of the Presidency and overturned the confidence people properly entrust to their representatives in Government to exercise efficiently and ably.

This is what Coolidge meant when he said “A President shouldn’t know too much.” President Obama, by contrast, is proudly hailed for not knowing anything about anything, as political expediency suits. It would be hard to imagine how much harm Obama could further inflict on the kind of faith Coolidge respected than he already has. It is shameful to see the destruction to our faith in America going as far as it has. Coolidge would doubtlessly look upon the current occupant in the White House with a mixture of grief and anger for the way it which the Office he strove so carefully to honor has been debased, its power to permit lawlessness excused and its responsibility on every front denied.