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Nostalgia October 2012

Aid for Age

Calvin Coolidge, The Idealist

By Tait Trussell

Coolidge was mocked by such notables as H.L. Mencken: Coolidge “slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night”, and Dorothy Parker, when she heard Coolidge had died, asked: “How could they tell?”

Senior citizens have always been the largest contingent of voters in national elections. Surely they will be again this year.

With gaping differences in the philosophies of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and the fears about whether Medicare will be salvaged, past presidents such as Reagan and Clinton are being cast as models. Some pundits are even writing about “Silent Cal” Coolidge, with both praise and ridicule.

Few of us were born when Coolidge held the highest office — in the roaring ‘20s. But his time in the White House is now being seen as one of the most prosperous times in our history. We’re in desperate in need of a return to prosperity today.

Coolidge was mocked by such notables as H.L. Mencken (Coolidge “slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night”), and Dorothy Parker, when she heard Coolidge had died, asked: How could they tell? Yet Coolidge presided over sustained economic growth without accumulating big debt. We had low taxation and restrained regulation. He served from 1923 to 1929.

In Coolidge’s days most Americans died in their 50s. About 107 million made up the country’s population. Unemployment stood at 5 percent. Some 343,000 men were still in the military in the early 1920s. Ninety percent of the automobiles built anywhere were owned by Americans.

Average annual earnings hit $1,236. The dollar was worth something then. Teachers typically made $970. The illiteracy rate reached a new low of 6 percent. Maybe we had good schools and teachers then. Today, disgracefully, 14 percent of Americans are illiterate.

His nickname “Silent Cal” came from his sparse language, even as a lawyer and politician. This was illustrated by one story occurring at a White House dinner when a lady sitting next to Coolidge said she had made a bet that she could make him say more than two words. His response was, “You lose.”

When he was in the Senate, Coolidge advised his fellow lawmakers: “Be brief. Above all, be brief.” We could stand a bit less political verbiage today.

Many Republicans take Coolidge seriously these days, casting aside the cartoon stereotypes that some critics have used to portray him. The fact that his presidency was typified by economic growth, low taxes, low debt, and faith in productivity and the benevolence of business gained broad admiration for his policies.

Arguments over Coolidge’s place in history continue. While he is remembered for his naps and few words, British historian Paul Johnson has written that Coolidge was “the most internally consistent and single-minded of modern American presidents,” and it was a Coolidge tactic “to lead people into believing that he was less sophisticated than he was.

He was known for this statement, according to an article by Geoffrey Norman: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.”

Coolidge went on to say: “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.”

Liberal idealists dream of a future Utopia. Conservative idealists dream of a Golden Age in the past. In politics, we probably will always have both kinds.

 

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

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