Bruce Frohnen has written a great piece explaining, “Not Betrayal: The Real Reason Paul Ryan Should Be ‘Primaried.'” While this delves into current politics, something we try to do regularly, what makes Frohnen’s point so powerful is the distinction he draws between what Ryan believes he’s doing and what Calvin Coolidge strove to do. As Frohnen says, “People like Mr. Ryan must be primaried out of office, not because they are false to their principles, but because their principles are false.” The difference is important. Ryan believes he is doing some great things, even serving the interests of his constituents and the people at large.

What the new Speaker misses is pivotal, however, as Frohnen continues: “Mr. Ryan and his establishment colleagues seem to believe that a bit of common sense of the business variety will reign in Mr. Obama and his social justice warrior administration. They are wrong. By seeking to merely streamline governmental machinery that warps the values and motivations of the people, Mr. Ryan is aiming, in reality, to make that machinery more efficient. This might buy his well-off constituents some more years of relative prosperity, but it definitely will empower those who always run such machinery (the sort of people who prefer administering others rather than letting them do for themselves) and who always see its central purpose as reconfiguring society. Whatever economic surplus the rest of us may produce, these would-be masters will see as rightly belonging to them.”

Enter Calvin Coolidge. As Frohnen writes, “Coolidge’s statement evinces an understanding that the people themselves are chiefly concerned to make a living and go about their lives unmolested.”  Even throughout Coolidge’s constructive economy program, applying (as he did) basic budgetary principles, he knew the goal was not the efficiency of the process as an end in itself but an obligation owed to people whose lives were directly and indirectly impacted by every decision Washington made.

When people misquote his “business of America is business” statement, they are accepting the false notion that the very livelihood and creative energy of the people flows from – even equivalent to – the national government. This is simply another way of endorsing what Coolidge time and time again condemned: the people working more for government than for themselves. Coolidge knew this apparatus, even cloaked as it could be in the guise of good intentions, left life all more the meager and real people prostrate before a Washington unwilling and uninterested in restraining its desire to spend what others have worked to earn.

Cal vehemently opposed the assumption of those burdens that the people themselves must necessarily bear to remain free. He despised the bureaucratization of life and warned continually about the extinguishing of culture and the loss of bountiful variety that local self-government had kept kindled for a century and a half. He demonstrated that streamlining government needed to happen through restraining it first and simplifying it not creating more layers of it. He made the case that government was for humanity not humanity for government. He saw people not as “economic units” to be carefully arranged into some overall plan for maximum efficiency,  but as human souls with the capacity to govern themselves, possessing needs and aspirations that no central authority, however well-meaning, is equipped to administer. There was a natural limit to what Washington can and should do, Cal observed. He understood well that there were real people at the end of all those regulations, rules, and statutes. It would be they, especially the poorest among us and those least able to bear it, who would have to carry the greatest share of the cost for all that “help” from D. C.

Life in America was so much more than the all-consuming demands of the machinery of government administration. Coolidge appreciated the massive difference between putting out a fire and simply managing the flames. What Mr. Ryan has yet to learn Coolidge grasped all too well: The problem isn’t to get government “working” with a more user-friendly array of goods and services, the problem is to get government out of the way so we can live, keep the rewards of our effort, and “work out our own salvation” as a free people once more.

Simply adding oil to the State machinery, handling people as so many worker-bees beholden to the Beltway, or placing a smiley faces atop the destructive reality government’s omnipresence in daily consciousness inflicts, may condition people to accept it as normal, even permanent, but it fixes nothing. It is akin to helping complete the Emperor’s Death Star not once but twice so that we can “create jobs” for the unemployed and bolster the Galactic economy. The death part we’ll worry about later, today’s “leadership” seems to say.

Instead, we should take up Cal’s challenge: to so exercise both our rights and responsibilities, as The People, to such an extent that we would not notice if Washington actually shut down for six months…preferably much longer.

The most often misquoted line of Calvin Coolidge is “the business of America is business,” (when he actually said, “The chief business of America is business”) typically paraded out as proof positive that #30 blindly worshiped Big Business, and encouraged its worst manifestations when partaking in the buying and selling of government influence. This injustice to Coolidge – torn violently from a speech that is (irony of ironies) about reporting the truth versus spreading propaganda – has been refuted so many times, those who have done the refuting almost wonder whether there is not a fair dose of malice in the misquotation. Still, many have not heard the actual quote in its context. It was almost ninety-one years to the day that, addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting at the New Willard Hotel in Washington, D. C., he said,

The relationship between governments and the press has always been recognized as a matter of large importance. Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Where ever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press. It has always been realized, sometimes instinctively, oftentimes expressly, that truth and freedom are inseparable. An absolutism could never rest upon any thing save a perverted and distorted view of human relationships and upon false standards set up and maintained by force. It has always found it necessary to attempt to dominate the entire field of education and instruction. It has thrived on ignorance. While it has sought to train the minds of a few, it has been largely with the purpose of attempting to give them a superior facility for misleading the many. Men have been educated under absolutism, not that they might bear witness to the truth, but that they might be the more ingenious advocates and defenders of false standards and hollow pretenses. This has always been the method of privilege, the method of class and caste, the method of master and slave.

He goes on to say,

The public press under an autocracy is necessarily a true agency of propaganda. Under a free government it must be the very reverse. Propaganda seeks to present a part of the facts, to distort their relations, and to force conclusions which could not be drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts. It has been observed that propaganda seeks to close the mind, while education seeks to open it. This has become one of the dangers of the present day.

The great difficulty in combating unfair propaganda, or even in recognizing it, arises from the fact that at the present time we confront so many new and technical problems that it is an enormous task to keep ourselves accurately informed concerning them. In this respect, you gentlemen of the press face the same perplexities that are encountered by legislators and government administrators. Whoever deals with current public questions is compelled to rely greatly upon the information and judgments of experts and specialists. Unfortunately, not all experts are to be trusted as entirely disinterested. Not all specialists are completely without guile. In our increasing dependence on specialized authority, we tend to become easier victims for the propagandists, and need to cultivate sedulously the habit of the open mind. No doubt every generation feels that its problems are the most intricate and baffling that have ever been presented for solution. But with all recognition of the disposition to exaggerate in this respect, I think we can fairly say that our times in all their social and economic aspects are more complex than any past period. We need to keep our minds free from prejudice and bias. Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much. But of propaganda, which is tainted or perverted information, we cannot have too little…And so I have conceived that the news, properly presented, should be a sort of cross section of the character of current human experience.

The President explains the basis for this approach to the task of news reporting,

Our American newspapers serve a double purpose. They bring knowledge and information to their readers, and at the same time they play a most important part in connection with the business interests of the community, both through their news and advertising departments...When I have contemplated these adjustments of business and editorial policy, it has always seemed to me that American newspapers are peculiarly representative of the practical idealism of our country.

He illustrates this with the disagreement over publishing individual income returns in the news. The facts had been faithfully reported in the news columns while at the same time the editorial pages gave full vent to the dissent that such information should be available at. In this way, Coolidge explains, “As practical newsmen they printed the facts. As editorial idealists they protested that there ought to be no such facts available.” In this way they represented the “practical idealism” of America as opposed to assuming the fiction or inconsistency of merely objective non-participants. The news had a stake in the game, as it were, and should not be in denial of practical realities for the good of the country.

Then, Coolidge comes to the point,

There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation, is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life.

Coolidge was not done, though many are content to cut him off then and there, as if no more context was necessary. If the characterization held true, Coolidge would launch into an unqualified defense of marrying politics with business. He does not do so. He explains the many practical benefits that accrue when those who have accumulated wealth voluntarily give it to others, not have it confiscated or exchange it for access to the public treasury. It manifests in the private endowment of schools, the quality of education that results, the encouragement of scientific inquiry, “the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture.” All of life does not, and should not, flow through Washington. Life was so much more to Coolidge than what government’s little part of it. People did not start their day with an agenda or tone dispatched from Washington. They went about their work and responsibilities with barely an acknowledgement that D.C. existed. To Cal, this was not something to change but to praise and promote as the way things ought to be. The news needed to reflect this practical reality instead of distorting the picture with a lopsided or disproportionate coverage of the anomalies of society and abstractions of theory. America was not merely a national government, it was a people, a culture, a vibrant reality where promoting liberty and service were far more important than the slowly encroaching bureaucratization of daily existence.

Coolidge retained an unshakable faith in the power of the spirit to always prevail over all the schemes of fleshly selfishness, even in the news. The truth would prevail and those who would try to be self-serving in their respective roles would find defeat. He knew that denying the practical concerns or self interests of daily news coverage would fail while championing liberty always works. He commended the newspapers of his day because they recognized that commitment to the practical realities that animate and inspire the rest of the country. By describing what America really is, the media had to truly live in the same world of working, earning, and serving. There was no danger in trusting America’s freedom because it possessed the remedies to its own “disorders.”

Coolidge is proclaiming the very opposite point than the mindlessly parroted caricature “the business of America is business” conveys. He powerfully concludes,

It can safely be assumed that self interest will always place sufficient emphasis on the business side of newspapers, so that they do not need any outside encouragement for that part of their activities. Important, however, as this factor is, it is not the main element which appeals to the American people. It is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction. No newspaper can be a success which fails to appeal to that element of our national life. It is in this direction that the public press can lend its strongest support to our Government. I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room, but my ultimate faith I would place in the high idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.

We deprive ourselves when we fail to grasp Coolidge’s full meaning and impose a mold into which his words and his character is supposed to fit. Papers like The New York Times and networks like CNN (and the case could be made for Fox News), now so enslaved to their political cause, have long abandoned the real world and practical understanding that Coolidge lauded in the news of his day. Many are proudly committed to this fantasy world because it adheres to their self-righteous purity in their political “old-time religion.” They have gladly entered a suicide pact believing reality and the American people be condemned, they will hold fast to the Faith of their impractical worldview. No paper, network, or individual correspondent will avoid becoming obsolete which (or who) does not give proper place to the ideals that motivate and engage the American people. That is why we are experiencing a passing of the old media and rise of the new but that new resonates for the very reason Coolidge cites. It lives in the practical reality of daily life. As long as the media of today understands America and its ideals, continues to engage in the business of living as the rest of us do, it will remain worthy of freedom, and contribute to the genuine advance of human life.

That is the takeaway from this speech, proof that Cal said so much more than the tepid and empty “business” line which has mischaracterized him too long.

We were all introduced to Calvin Coolidge, that enigmatic man from Vermont, through various paths. Some of us learned of him many years ago, perhaps from a professor, a relative, or even a book or play. Some are just now learning of “Silenced Cal” from more recent sources, whether it be from our friend at BestPresidentialBios, Amity Shlaes’ Coolidge, Charles Johnson’s Why Coolidge Matters, David Pietrusza’s Silent Cal’s Almanack or perhaps C-Span or the White House Historical Association, the latter two both showcasing the Coolidges this past year. For me this fascination with the enigma that is Mr. Coolidge began in high school when I encountered Robert Sobel’s book which has now been re-released by Regnery last October. I knew little of the bitter historiography from the 1930s through the 1970s that mocked, derided, and caricatured the quiet but diligent #30. I didn’t even understand the profound impact Cal had on President Reagan, who restored his predecessor to a high place of honor: A commanding position overlooking the Cabinet Room, reminding everyone (even the puzzled press) that Coolidge was the executive inspiration for #40. But also, by placing his portrait there it was as if to say: Cal — with his relentless scrutiny of wasteful effort, foolhardy government planning, and especially loose spending habits — is watching. I did not yet know of the Symposium discussing Coolidge at the JFK Library the same year Sobel’s book came out, nor did I fully recognize the post-Reagan wave of interest underway as I picked up Mr. Sobel’s book and began to read. Little did I grasp at the time it would set me on this journey to better understand and explain Coolidge with “The Importance of the Obvious.”

An American Enigma was a refreshing sea breeze after years of stagnant, stifling mischaracterization. Finally here was an interpretation that presented Coolidge in his own words, on his own terms, and did so without either rose-tinted rhetoric or an appraisal that discounted his views and actions as short-sighted and illegitimate before even explaining them to readers. Up until then, the field of writing on Coolidge was anything but crowded (one could not say it is any different now!) and even less of it earnestly seeking to know who Cal was. It was supposed to be enough to accept the place assigned to him by the ‘scholars.’ Sobel knowing the risk, bravely waded in and began swimming against the current. By merely furnishing a platform for Coolidge to essentially speak for himself, Sobel left reviewers mystified, policymakers bewildered, and the Gatekeepers of historical narrative concerned. This was not the “Silent Cal” you were looking for. This was a President with a spine, ability, and clarity of purpose. He knew who he was, stood outside the Washington system, and still got some major things done there.

One has to go back and look at the conversation in the 90s to appreciate how much this work by Sobel ran against the grain for the Typesetters of Historical Story-telling. They were being contradicted, their conclusions challenged, their credibility affronted. How could this be the Coolidge everyone knew, the man who is supposed to rank immovably among the anonymous do-nothings in Presidential rating games? He was “Silent Cal,” the Yankee weaned on a pickle, the empty tool of Big Business, the purveyor of platitudes, the indolent and sleepy Captain who let America drift into disaster, a mess only the likes of FDR and redefined liberalism could fix!

By handing Calvin Coolidge the microphone, in effect, Sobel was giving a new generation a chance – even an imperfect glimpse – into what could be discovered when the layers of falsehood were peeled back. It was not a man who existed only in the imagination of the author nor was Sobel presuming to comprehensively explain Coolidge (Cal remains enigmatic, even to his friends), it was nonetheless an overturning of misrepresentations that had become uncontested truths. When the years of academic impressionism (“Don’t pay attention to the details, just accept the broad strokes we paint over him”) inflicted on Cal were scraped back, a portrait of the original Great Communicator began to emerge. Coolidge not only had things worth saying, he proved he could do what he said, with the result that both his words and his actions possessed a weight of relevance and importance that resonated with people. Coolidge speaks to them, he addresses our situation in so many ways even now.

People across the country can now see for themselves the sharp contrast between the gravely underestimated Cal Coolidge and much of official Washington today. This was not only the work of the late, great Robert Sobel but also of others who have now gone on: Marvin Stone of U.S. New and World Report, and Thomas Silver of Claremont Institute, to name a few. It was they who kept the beacons lit when darkness crowded in over much of history-craft, policy-making, and administration in the 1960s, 70s, and beyond. They are the grandfathers of a Coolidge restoration that continues to blossom and catch fire in the hearts and minds of Americans to this day. The coming year finds America at a kind of crossroads never encountered before, it can be a year of triumph for Coolidge’s principles or it can continue a free-fall that will extinguish once for all not only Cal’s confidence in our ideals but also the greatest hope for constitutional self-government the world has ever known.