On Race Relations and Presidential Power, Part 1

January 28, 2014February 10, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / 3 Comments

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit of it” — Proverbs 18:21

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in fittings of silver” — Proverbs 25:11

Few, especially in public life, have respected the truth of these maxims than Calvin Coolidge. He understood the power of the spoken word. It carries the ability to inspire one to greater heights of goodness and nobility or to destroy with malice and hatred. It can build up the soul or crush the spirit. It carries a potency that cannot be entirely harnessed or contained once uttered and thus dare not be exercised flippantly or with casual disregard for the responsibilities which fall to the speaker, especially as the President of the United States of America.

Coolidge wielded this power effectively during his Presidency by deploying the spoken word sparingly, giving what he would say maximum effect upon the listener. Coolidge knew the speaker can control the timing of what is said while the damage done to credibility by spiteful and vindictive rhetoric cannot be undone. If the President gave legitimacy to what is petty, hateful and divisive, however culturally or politically influential those forces may be, it would be no less an abdication of duty than the Boston police abandoning their posts to the lawless and violent. It would bring impugn not only the trust placed in our leaders but upon what America is and what it has done, as Coolidge noted in his Inaugural Address in 1925. This is why he so carefully withheld his words and refrained from being the first to intervene with “comment” upon every area of life. Experience taught him that more harm came when a President indulges the desire to be “quick to speak” and “slow to hear” without a fair hearing of all the facts thereby taking sides against the fairness and decency of Americans. This is why his silence and refrained involvement, so often mistaken for insensitivity, disinterest or rudeness, were actually measured with a sincere and heartfelt regard for the situation and what was in the best interest of everyone directly concerned. His respect for people gave him pause. After all, Coolidge understood what too many current politicians find to be an inconvenient, confining truth: Freedom is a zero-sum game. Every action taken by the President removes a commensurate ability from individuals to so act for oneself.

With a word, Presidents can exacerbate strife and division or heal and comfort. To have used the Presidential platform and denounced the Klan, as the Democrat candidate Mr. Davis urged in 1924, would have validated an utterly illegitimate organization with enough importance to warrant a sitting President’s attention. The Klan, despite how politically powerful they were, simply did not merit a moment of official recognition. Instead, he went to Howard University and spoke of the genuinely phenomenal advancement of black Americans since emancipation. To a Mr. Gardner, who wrote protesting the participation of black candidates that election year, Coolidge replied,

“Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. You have suggested that in some fashion I should bring influence to bear to prevent the possibility of a colored man being nominated for Congress. In reply, I quote my great predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt: ‘I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope–the door of opportunity–is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.’ ”

August 16, 1924 edition of The New York Age. What Coolidge did made headlines and further strengthened the trust and credibility Coolidge possessed.

August 16, 1924 edition of The New York Age. Coolidge’s emphatic endorsement of Harlem’s candidate, Dr. Roberts, further strengthened the credibility and trust between Cal and black Americans. W. E. B. DuBois estimated that 1 million blacks voted for Coolidge that fall.

He went to the Holy Name Society and declared, “He who gives license to his tongue only discloses the contents of his own mind. By the excess of his words he proclaims his lack of discipline. By his very violence he shows his weakness.” He went to Omaha, two years after Klan-inspired riots shook the city, and Coolidge spoke before the American Legion on October 6, 1925, saying,

“If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character.”

He went to the Congress annually over the course of nearly six years to devote a portion of each Message to the circumstances of what then were 12 million “colored” Americans. Offering his set of proposals for Congress to act upon, he recognized “that these difficulties are to a large extent local problems which must be worked out by the mutual forbearance and human kindness of each community. Such a method gives much more promise of a real remedy than outside interference.” He would confront discrimination firmly and bigotry honestly but he would not strip an individual of his or her freedom in order to pursue the impossible: perfect equality through government-directed vengeance.

In what the coming years would reveal was the last desperate gasp of “respectable” Klan retrenchment, the KKK took advantage of Coolidge’s absence from Washington to follow the debacle that was the 1924 Democrat Convention to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, August 8, 1925. Coolidge would help deliver the decline and demise of the Klan’s membership and influence in the years ahead. They would never again be the nationally regarded organization it had been under President Wilson.

He could have opined the injustice of it all, decried the unfairness of “the system” and demanded sweeping legislation to “fix” it. Because he did not hardly makes him a do-nothing enabler, he was appealing to higher ideals than perpetual victimhood. Ideals that constructively edify and encourage everyone to rise above the typical to strive for the exceptional, opportunities at self-betterment and self-sufficiency only possible when individual freedom is honored. It seems that bad laws simply do not exist in the eyes of this current regime. As with any authoritarian, any action is justified to meet the situation. The President behaves as it there is no virtue in refrained action, withholding the use of power to take stock of what collateral damage is being done. In actuality, the array of unintended and intended consequences meted out to political enemies in order to settle scores and correct “inequities” in America’s traditions and institutions is the exact opposite of wisdom or justice. Coolidge reminds us that there are situations when the best use of power is not to parade it, when the wisest means of diffusing conflict is not to advertise it and the surest solutions rest not in Executive word or deed but in the renewed commitment to the ideals on which America began. These ideals find expression not merely in great parchments and speeches but in the lives of a people free to govern themselves.

In the series that will follow on race and Presidential power, we are going to examine Coolidge’s record on race, reappraising what he did do when it came to differences between Americans, how he addressed discrimination and segregation, how he fought to end lynching, how he worked to build up not tear down with the power of the spoken word and acted, usually behind the scenes, to handle requests and calm tensions all without sweeping civil rights legislation or grandiose executive might. His record on race, as with most of Coolidge’s accomplishments, is underrated not because it was uneventful or he did nothing about it but because his record under-promised but over-delivered. In a very real way, Coolidge’s approach to race relations achieved more than the boldness of TR, the retrenchment of Wilson or the flashy promises and empty results of FDR and LBJ. We will explore how in the coming days.

“The words of the President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately. It would be exceedingly easy to set the country all by the ears and foment hatreds and jealousies, which, by destroying faith and confidence, would help nobody and harm everybody. The end would be the destruction of all progress” — Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography, p.186.

The Coolidges in Florida, January-February 1930

January 23, 2014June 8, 2015 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

The Coolidges in Florida, January-February 1930

Having visited Florida near the end of his term to dedicate Bok Tower in Lake Wales, February 1, 1929, Calvin, and his wife Grace, came back to visit the state from January 8-February 13, 1930.

They visited a number of places during their brief time here before heading West, reaching California by February 19th. In this picture, snapped on the 24th of January, Mr. Coolidge is touring the Orange Festival in Winter Haven while Mrs. Coolidge is not present, having remained in Mount Dora to plant a cypress for the local Garden Club that day. The Citrus Queen, Ruth Snyder, is presenting former President Coolidge with grapefruit while Mrs. Trumbull, wife of the Connecticut Governor and mother-in-law of Cal’s son John, samples an orange. Lakeside Inn manager, Archie Hurlburt, stands between them and at the far right of the photo, then-Major James Van Fleet, former head coach of the Gators and ROTC director for the University of Florida, Gainesville, watches the informal ceremony.

The same day, January 24th, Mrs. Coolidge remained behind in Mount Dora (where they stayed at Lakeside Inn for a month) to plant this cypress for local Garden Club, dedicating the Community Center.

The same day, January 24th, Mrs. Coolidge remained behind in Mount Dora (where the Coolidges stayed at Lakeside Inn for a month) to plant this cypress for the local Garden Club, dedicating the Community Center.

While the inscription is blurred, it was assumed that Calvin, not Grace, would dedicate the Community Building. As it turned out, he was out of town at the Orange Festival, while she planted the tree. Unfortunately, it did not last long being a variety of cypress that did not adapt well to the Florida climate.

While the inscription is blurred, it reads “Dedication…By Calvin Coolidge.” This is not actually the case. It was assumed that Calvin, not Grace, would dedicate the Community Building. As it turned out, he was out of town at the Orange Festival in Winter Haven, while she planted the tree. Unfortunately, the tree did not last long, being a variety of cypress that did not adapt well to Florida climes.

This note corrects the inscription on the handle but beware when taking the tour at the Mount Dora Historical Society Museum: They characterize Cal as too mean and rude to participate in the ceremony. They neglect to mention that he was not even there…but spent the afternoon in Winter Haven that day, as pictured above.

On the Will to Cut Expenditures

January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

Who said, “The plan is to reduce the cost of Federal government operations by 25 per cent”?

Or, “We should plan to have a definitely balanced budget for the third year of recovery and from that time on seek a continuing reduction of the national debt”?

How about, “The Treasury is all right and we are balancing the budget — you needn’t worry”?

Or, finally, “It has taken courage for the Federal government to go into the ‘red’…But it has been worth it”?

If you guessed “Calvin Coolidge,” you would be wrong. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, between 1932 and 1938. As Bruce Barton pointed out, however, there was no further talk of economy after 1938. “The talk was about the preparation for war and, later, about the fine new world the war was going to usher in.”

Bruce Barton, whose 1953 article, “Unless It Hurts, It’s No Good,” is featured here.

Not only had 1931 seen the first budget deficit in twelve years, the debt stood at $21 billion by January 1933. When Roosevelt died in April 1945, the debt had ballooned to $233 billion. President Truman built upon that infamous legacy with another $32 billion of his own. Writing as a new President was taking office in 1953, Bruce Barton hastened to the point of his article: “Both of these presidents talked economy, but neither of them had any real heart for it. Neither of them was willing to do anything that would endanger the support of a pressure group in the next campaign.” Both were pandering to people, telling voters what they wanted to hear but never delivering anything more than eloquent words and good intentions. When the occasion called for it, the cuts promised in the heat of campaigns were too politically painful to make, risked the alienation of some support group somewhere and endangered electoral success in the future. They cared too much for the appearances and not enough for the substantial harm inflicted on people by the curtailment of growth and opportunity because of Government’s limitless spending habits. It is a lack of discipline, not bravery, that Government demonstrates when spending more than it has. Saying one thing and doing another, especially when one is the President of the United States, does not illustrate courage either, it exemplifies cowardice.

In contrast, Barton continues, “Calvin Coolidge cut the debt of his day by nearly 25 per cent. To disparage him is now the fashion. He is slurred over as a ‘do-nothing’ president, a national nonentity. Actually he was all guts.”

Before you snicker and chortle, dear reader, consider carefully Barton’s four examples substantiating that claim.

1. “As governor, he had the guts to break the Boston police strike. When Samuel Gompers, the country’s most powerful labor leader, demanded that the striking policemen be reinstated, Coolidge wired: ‘There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at any time.’ ” While it has often been incorrectly asserted that the danger had already passed and that Governor Coolidge took credit for something he did not do, this telegram might never have been sent and so cogently framed the heart of the issue had Coolidge not sent it. He was not the politician who runs from confrontation.

2. “He had the guts to veto the act passed by the members of both Houses of the Legislature raising their own salaries.” The veto, just like the telegram, did not have to be sent. Governor Coolidge could have joined the General Court that spring of 1919 with a wink and a nod, signing their $500 increase and saying nothing. Like trimming down state agencies from 120 to 19 departments, however, Governor Coolidge refused to simply “punt” difficult tasks to his successor, even when the law allowed for delay.

3. “As president, he had the guts to veto the first big farm subsidy, the McNary-Haugen Bill, on the grounds that the bill was not only an abuse of the taxing power, but also a sure path to overproduction.” The sharp language of both veto messages took everyone by surprise at the time, who considered Coolidge incapable of being riled about anything. He took on the issue firmly and ended attempts at government control of agriculture for the rest of his term. This is all the more incredible considering that two solid Republicans sponsored the bill, a large majority passed it twice and a very influential “Farm Bloc” wanted it to be law.

4. “He also killed the excessive soldiers’ bonus, since the veterans had already received a discharge bonus of 256 million dollars. Coolidge’s friends and foes agreed in predicting that such actions would kill him politically; yet the people gave him overwhelming re-election.” This, too, is stunning when, as it seems today, there is no price too high for veteran’s benefits.

Barton comes to the point, as America still stood at war-time levels of spending: it was time to reapply Coolidge’s courage, not merely echo the same empty words and pleasing promises. “History should teach us that you can’t slash without incurring the opposition of powerful pressure groups. That unless the slash hurts it isn’t any good.”

Coolidge put it this way, “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.” Yet, ninety years ago, a reserved but courageous man from Vermont triumphed over that temptation, overcoming it not merely once or twice but repeatedly and consistently.

The Coolidges, among the crowd, at Salem train depot.

The Coolidges, among the crowd, at Salem, MA, train depot.

“I don’t think in all my experience, which has been very large…with proposals for spending money, I have ever had any proposal from anyone as to what could be done to save any money. Sometimes linked with the proposal for an immediate large expenditure is the suggestion that it ultimately will result in a saving…[T]hat is about the extent of the outside assistance I have had in that direction” — December 14, 1928.

“The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. if we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, four hundred millions of Mississippi flood control, two or three hundred millions of river and harbor improvements, two or three hundred millions of public buildings, hundreds of millions of good roads and other hundreds of millions of pensions, the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go” — August 4, 1930.