On Presidential Limits

August 20, 2013August 21, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

The custom of two terms established by President Washington was faithfully preserved for one hundred and fifty-one years until the precedent was broken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, winning his third term in 1940. Coolidge had been gone seven years by that time. F. D. R. would be elected for a fourth term in 1944 and die in office the following April. The twenty-second Amendment was ratified in February 1951 in order to formally establish the original two-term limit as part of the Constitution.

Looking back on his five and a half years as President, Coolidge offered some enduring insights on the need for Presidential limits. This is not only exemplified by the term of office custom, which is now law, but the necessity to respect the Office, honor the limits of its power and guard against its delusory sense of greatness. This risk is not unique to the Presidency; one’s approach to authority on any level is just as prone to abuse and self-deception.

Coolidge, never buying the notion that he was a great man, held each responsibility with the humility of one who could handle what was expected of him without pretentiousness or “muscle-flexing.” He made the difficult look easy but his ability to lead came from discipline, training and perspective not arrogance or condescension. He had this to say about limits,

…[I]rrespective of the third-term policy, the presidential office is of such a nature that it is difficult to conceive how one man can successfully serve the country for a term of more than eight years.

While I am in favor of continuing the long-established custom of the country in relation to a third term for a President, yet I do not think that the practice applies to one who has succeeded to part of a term as Vice President. Others might argue that it does, but I doubt if the country would so consider it…

…A President should not only not be selfish, but he ought to avoid the appearance of selfishness. The people would not have confidence in a man that appeared to be grasping for office.

It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.

They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.

The chances of having wise and faithful public service are increased by a change in the presidential office after a moderate length of time.

In the higher ranges of public service men appear to come forward to perform a certain duty. When it is performed their work is done. They usually find it impossible to readjust themselves in the thought of the people so as to pass on successfully to the solution of new public problems.

An examination of the records of those Presidents who have served eight years will disclose that in almost every instance the latter part of their term has shown very little in the way of constructive accomplishment. They have often been clouded with grave disappointments.

While I had a desire to be relieved of the pretensions and delusions of public life, it was not because of any attraction of pleasure or idleness.

We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again…Our country does not believe in idleness. It honors hard work. I wanted to serve the country again as a private citizen.

In this editorial depiction by J. N. “Ding” Darling entitled, “Just a whole lot of nobodies who never knew nothin’,” published October 15, 1940, the cartoonist conveys F. D. R.’s destructive disregard of our institutions and traditions. It is a suitable tribute that, among the “ghosts” of past Presidents arrayed against Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge is conspicuously among them (L to R: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland and Coolidge stand in the foreground, with Theodore Roosevelt and the rest of those Presidents who have gone on, standing in the background). Coolidge’s warnings echo even now.

On Separate Classes

August 18, 2013August 18, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

“There is yet another manifest disposition which has preyed on the weakness of the race from its infancy, denounced alike by the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and repugnant to all that is American, the attempt to create class distinctions. In its full development this means the caste system, wherein such civilization as exists is rigidly set, and that elasticity so necessary for progress, and that recognition of equality which has been the aim and glory of our institutions, are destroyed and denied. Society to advance must be not a dead form but a living organism, plastic, inviting progress. There are no classes here. There are different occupations and different stations, certainly there can be no class of employer and employed. All true Americans are working for each other, exchanging the results of the efforts of hand and brain wrought through the unconsumed efforts of yesterday, which we call capital, all paying and being paid by each other, serving and being served. To do otherwise is to stand disgraced and alien to our institutions. This means that government must look at the part in light of the whole, that legislation must be directed not for private interest but for public welfare, and that thereby alone will each of our citizens find their greatest accomplishment and success” — Governor Calvin Coolidge, formally accepting Republican nomination as Vice-President, July 27, 1920.

More than ten years later, in the midst of economic downturn, Garet Garrett would echo the same point through his column in the Saturday Evening Post. In articles like, “There Goes Mine,” written in 1932, Garrett attacks the fallacy that economic classes are both fixed and permanent. He refers to the resentment during depressions of car ownership and how confidence in one’s ability to move upward from poverty to prosperity remains entirely within each person’s reach. Coolidge and Garrett both understood that liberty means opportunity, an opportunity that is not coincidental but directly due to our unique political and economic system as founded. Margaret Thatcher, the late British prime minister, grasped the significance of this truth better than have many Americans. She observed that when opportunity is maximized, class distinctions diminish and the disparity between “rich” and “poor” decreases, contrary to every economic “expert.”

As all three realized, however, the opposite holds true every time socialism is allowed to set policy, be it locally or nationally. For the Left, as Thatcher noted, it is better for the poor to stay poor “provided the rich were less rich.” Such a view summarizes modern liberalism. It is the Left’s animus against success and its vested interest in perpetual victim-hood which drive its agenda. It is never about rising to higher aspirations or striving for greater ideals. It is about exchanging our independence for the security they provide, a security of marginal existence.

Coolidge, Garett and Thatcher all knew what the Left denies to this day: policies that maximize individual opportunity remove class distinctions automatically and enable equality on the basis of each person’s determination and potential. Modern liberals would have us all equally poor, feeling guilty of ever rising above the marginal, dependent and miserable and call that “progress.” Incapable of fixing the problems Coolidge’s policies addressed, all that is left for modern liberalism is to keep the class warfare going, to provoke violence, and to project its failures onto those striving to heal and reunite us with the freedom of a truly classless society envisioned by our Framers.

On Responsible Governing

August 14, 2013August 14, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

“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.