O M N I V O R O U S
R E A D E R
The Great Refrainer
Silent Cal Coolidge and the business of saying as little as possible
BY STEPHEN E. SMITH
Americans tend to
indentify our media-savvy 20th century presidents with their most memorable soundbite — “I’m not a crook,” “Read my lips. . . ,” “I didn’t have sex with that woman,” etc. — but it’s impossible to tell where Calvin Coolidge, the first president to address the American people via radio waves, falls on the oops-I’m-sorry-I-said-that scale. Silent Cal not only escapes being identified with any egregious misstatements, he escapes being identified with any utterance whatsoever. Indeed, the question most Americans would ask about Coolidge is: What did he say?
The answer, according to Amity Shlaes’ new biography, Coolidge: An American Enigma, is not much. For Coolidge loquaciousness was a vice. All his life he made a point of saying as little as possible, even though he held more press conferences than any other American president, then or now. What he did say usually fell into the tomorrow-is-another-day category of self-verifying truisms: — “I am for economy, and after that I am for more economy.” Also, “The business of America is business.” Under Coolidge’s light-handed leadership the federal debt fell, the top income tax rate came down by half, the federal budget was always in surplus, and the unemployment rate lingered at 5 percent. Although Coolidge may have ridden the horse in the direction it was headed, there’s no denying that during his administration Americans wired their homes for electricity, bought their first cars or household appliances on credit, took to the air in large 20
Salt • July 2013
numbers, submitted more patent applications than ever before, cut back on their nasty habit of lynching fellow citizens, quit the Ku Klux Klan in droves, lit the first White House Christmas tree and so forth. Shlaes would have us believe that most of the positive aspects of American life began to flourish during Coolidge’s tenure, in large part because he said and did little. She dubs Silent Cal “the great refrainer.” In her extensively researched biography, Shlaes includes all the obligatory facts concerning Coolidge’s rise to power — his sojourn in city offices and the state legislature, his stint as governor of Massachusetts, and in particular his handling of the long forgotten Boston police strike, the event that catapulted him into the national limelight. In September 1919, the majority of the Boston police force walked off the job, leaving the city open to hooliganism and looting. Governor Coolidge held to a hard line when dealing with Samuel Gompers and the union, stating: “There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime,” a stance that would later be adopted by Ronald Reagan when dealing with air traffic controllers. Coolidge’s three years as Warren Harding’s vice president left the American people with little insight into what his policies might be when he assumed the presidency. They need not have been concerned. When Coolidge took over the reins of government, the country was enjoying unparalleled prosperity. As president, he worked to keep federal interference at a minimum. He opposed farm subsidies, preferring a loan program. He spoke out on civil rights, but did little to promote equal opportunity for minorities, and he ignored pleas for federal relief and flood control measures, even when his native New England was ravaged by natural disasters. In short, Coolidge was a president who strongly embodied the contemporary Republican view of small government — which raises questions about the timely appearance of Shlaes’ “scholarly” work and the responsibility and The Art & Soul of Wilmington