Coolidge_An American Enigma

by Robert Sobel

  A month after the Republicans left Chicago, the Democrats convened in San Francisco and hammered out a platform that disagreed with the GOP’s on the matter of the League of Nations, but otherwise, like the GOP document, came out in favor of virtue, the flag, and motherhood. Bound by a rule requiring a two-thirds vote for the nominee, the Democrats went to forty ballots before the delegates selected a compromise candidate, Governor James Cox of Ohio. For the vice presidency, the Democrats named former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Roosevelt was a bright, articulate, handsome young man, but his major attribute was that magic name—the dead hero to so many of both parties. As at the GOP convention, the leading Democrats maligned one another, while the spirit of Woodrow Wilson hovered over the meetings. By 1920 many Americans thought entering the war had been a mistake, doubted the merits of the League, were bored by red-hunting, and were quite simply tired of crusades in general. In addition, they had been crushed by the postwar inflation and the depression that followed. The 1920 election came in bad economic times, never a good omen for the party in power.

  Looking the candidates over, the same newspapers and reporters who opposed Harding decided that Cox was little better. The nation had to choose between two Ohio politicians, both of whom had been newspapermen. Some turned to the vice presidential nominees. More than a few decided to call the 1920 contest “the kangaroo election,” indicating that the hind legs were stronger than the front ones. In this, at least, they turned out to be prescient.

  After his meeting with Harding in Washington, Coolidge returned to Massachusetts, where he began preparing his acceptance address. No nominee of either party would accept the nomination at the convention until Roosevelt broke that tradition in 1932, so in 1920, a delegation from the convention went to see Coolidge and informed him officially of the designation. On this “Notification Day,” July 27, Coolidge delivered an address in which he struck familiar themes:In a free republic a great government is the product of a great people. They will look to themselves rather than government for success. The destiny, the greatness of America lies around the hearthstone. If thrift and industry are taught there, and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears, if honor abide there, and high ideals, if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character, America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad. If these virtues be absent there is no power that can supply these blessings. Look well then to the hearthstone, therein all hope for America lies.

  So, in his first public utterance after accepting the nomination, Coolidge said character was more important to the nation than fortune. He expressed the thought often in Massachusetts and repeated it in Washington. Otherwise it was not a memorable address, with the usual appeals to patriotism, the need for stability, and praise for the nation, the party, and the candidate. There was something for everyone; Coolidge was, as usual, circumspect. Toward the end he got to the key element: the League. He selected his words carefully. The proposed League—which is to say, Wilson’s League—he called “subversive of the traditions and independence of America.” But the Republican Party, he added, “approves the principle of agreement among nations to preserve peace, and pledges itself to the making of such an agreement, preserving American independence, and rights, as will meet every duty America owes to humanity.”

  Coolidge held close to what Harding had been saying, indicating support for the Lodge position. Both Crane and Lodge were in the audience; although Crane certainly opposed the position, he also knew his protégé had no choice but to take this stance. (Even so, he called Stearns to his side to complain about Lodge’s presence: “He has no business here—he is not wanted.”)

  Crane did not live to see the Republican ticket win; he died on October 2. “He was a great man,” Coolidge wrote to his father. He did not, as might be expected, indicate why he considered Crane great. Instead, he added, “I shall always remember he voted for me until the last.”

  Coolidge correctly assessed the situation in Massachusetts after Crane’s departure. William Butler was the clear choice to take the departed boss’s place, which he did. Butler and Coolidge had always been close, and would remain so. But Butler was a local politician without influence on the national scene. The shy, withdrawn Coolidge had always needed that kind of help. Now he was vice president, and the closest he had to such a person was Frank Stearns, who had no leverage with the party leaders or the Senate Republicans. Nor could he expect any help from Lodge, with whom he was estranged. Coolidge would have to make do on his own this time. In discussing Lodge off the record with a friend, Robert Brady, a Boston Globe reporter, Coolidge remarked,Now you ask about Lodge’s friends. I don’t think Lodge has many friends. He has a host of admirers. But there is a big difference between admirers and friends. Crane had friends and those friends will stick to Crane dead in state politics. Lodge’s admirers will stick to him until he gets his first setback. When that comes you won’t see many people sitting on the mourner’s bench.

  Coolidge attended the Crane funeral, as did Lodge. Photographers wanted a picture of the two of them together, and Lodge was willing. “I came here to bury my friend,” Coolidge snapped. “It is no time for photographs.” Lodge must have known at that moment that Coolidge would neither forgive nor forget.

  As the general campaign began, Harding followed the planned front porch approach, but vigorous efforts mounted by Cox and Roosevelt forced him to take to the road, which was originally to be Coolidge’s role. As it turned out, Coolidge spent less time on the stump than the other national candidates. In August he spoke before groups in Massachusetts, and in September he did so in Maine and New Hampshire as well. On September 18 the Massachusetts Republican Convention nominated Channing Cox for governor and Alvan Fuller for lieutenant governor. Coolidge, there to speak for them, said that the national Democrats offered “a mirage of false hopes and false security.” In early October he left New England for the first time in the campaign to deliver a speech in Philadelphia.

  The party decided to send Coolidge on a tour of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas, since the Republicans thought his style might play well in southern rural areas. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a particularly hopeful expedition. Kentucky had voted Democratic in every presidential election since the Civil War, and the last time Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina voted Republican was during Reconstruction. The Republicans won occasionally in West Virginia, however.

  By then the party realized that Coolidge was no dynamo when it came to speech-making. His Vermont twang wasn’t the real problem; it was there, but it was not disconcerting or unpleasant. Rather, Coolidge was stiff and awkward, and not given to the niceties of delivery. To compensate for this, the party surrounded him with several able orators, including Lowden and Kentucky Governor Edwin Morrow.

  Coolidge was hesitant to make the tour, writing to his father on October 12, “I did not want to go on a trip. I do not think it will do any good. I am sure I shall not enjoy it. A candidate should never be sent on a trip of that kind.” To the Republican National Committee he wrote that he was still governor of Massachusetts, and should not be asked to desert his position for weeks on end. More important, “my abilities do not lie in that direction.” As they set out, a reporter asked Coolidge if he was looking forward to the campaign. “I don’t like it,” was the reply. “I don’t like to speak. It’s all nonsense. I’d much better be at home doing my work.”

  The provincial Coolidge was timid about going to strange places. But he went, and appeared to be effective, even though he didn’t change many minds in strong Democratic enclaves. Still, the New England Yankee was able to relate to the southern farmers, and they to him. As he traveled from place to place, delivering his set pieces, he grew increasingly restive. His speeches dealt with such matters as the need for thrift and industry, the importance of cutting taxes and reining in gov
ernment. There were touches of what a later generation would call “red-baiting,” along with suggestions that the Republicans would return the country to true Americanism. This reflected what Harding and other Republicans were saying but was out of character for Coolidge. Certainly Coolidge was a novice in national politics and perhaps he believed he needed to take a different approach from what he had used in Massachusetts, or perhaps at the time he believed in this idea of true Americanism.

  Coolidge also talked about the League, not altering his views from Notification Day, but he did reach out to voters who supported the world organization by saying that there was more chance of America entering the body under a Republican administration than with the Democrats. Of course, he was talking about the League with reservations, which had come to be Republican dogma. In all, Coolidge did not say anything rash or unexpected during his tour. But then, that was his role. After the southern swing around the circuit he went to New York for a rally, which included leading a large parade up Fifth Avenue, and then back to Massachusetts.

  On October 29 he wrote to his father: “I have been away and too busy to write. We are all well. I feel sure we shall carry the election by a good margin. It would have been a little bigger three weeks ago but it will be enough.” On November 1 Coolidge again wrote to John Coolidge: “The campaign is over. Some mistakes were made, always are I suppose, but the ones this year were so foolish I do not see how they could have been made by men really trying to elect the ticket.” He must have known nothing could prevent a Harding landslide. A few days before the election New York bookmakers were offering odds of ten to one on Harding–Coolidge, higher than any recorded in American history.

  On November 3 Coolidge wrote asking whether his father had received a message he had sent the previous night regarding the election. Since John Coolidge’s home lacked both a telephone and electricity, it would have been sent to the general store and from there relayed to him. The early returns on November 2 indicated a major Republican victory. Coolidge asked his father whether he knew how the voting had gone in Plymouth. He learned that his birthplace had given the Republican ticket 158 votes against 15 for the Democrats, not surprising, although four years earlier Hughes had only a two-vote margin over Wilson. For the nation as a whole, Harding–Coolidge received 16.1 million votes, and Cox–Roosevelt, 9.1 million. Harding’s margin of victory in the popular vote was the largest since reliable records were kept. He received 404 electoral votes to Cox’s 127. Debs received close to a million votes, many doubtless protest votes, since few Americans preferred the Socialists’ proposition of world government to the League of Nations.

  Harding won every borough in New York City, a bastion of the Democratic Party, and he also carried Coolidge’s Boston, as well as every electoral district bordering the Pacific. Some saw this as a repudiation of Wilson and global idealism, and in part it was. But the country was traditionally Republican. Wilson’s victories had been due to the Republican–Progressive split, not to a political change. Still, critics said repeatedly that with Harding the country was returning to the days of McKinley, the bucolic small-town and farm America so different from the urban country that was emerging even during the late nineteenth century. Many who voted for him would have agreed—that was what they wanted. Harding’s appeal to a “return to normalcy” did not fall on deaf ears.

  Voter participation in 1916 had been 61.6 percent of eligible voters; in 1920 the figure was 49.2 percent, the lowest since 1824. The Nineteenth Amendment had added 9.5 million voters to the roles, but not many women bothered to exercise their new right. In 1920, 26.7 million Americans voted, compared to 18.4 million in 1916, but women did not account for all of this differential, as the return of veterans also accounted for part of the difference.

  As for the southern and border states Coolidge had visited, Tennessee went Republican by a margin of two thousand votes, for the first time since 1868 (it would not do so again until Eisenhower ran in 1952), but the Democrats took Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. West Virginia was strong for Harding, but South Carolina was overwhelmingly Democratic.

  The Republicans did well in the congressional races, too. Their margin in the old Senate had been two; now it rose to twenty. There had been 233 Republicans in the old House of Representatives; the new one would have 289, while the Democrats fell from 191 to 142. On the Massachusetts scene, Channing Cox had no trouble defeating his Democratic rival, John Jackson Walsh, by a better than two to one margin.

  Coolidge delivered the obligatory victory statement, and as with his campaign speeches, he suggested the GOP—and not the Democratic Party—was the party of patriots. The Harding–Coolidge victory, he said, “means the end of a period which has seemed to substitute words for things, and the beginning of a period of real patriotism and true national honor.” This theme would reappear in other Coolidge statements, some of which were quite surprising. In his Autobiography he would look back at the 1921 inaugural and write:When the inauguration was over I realized that the same thing for which I had worked in Massachusetts had been accomplished in the nation. The radicalism which had tinged our whole political and economic life from soon after 1900 to the World War period was passed. There were still echoes of it, and some of its votaries remained, but its power was gone. The country had little interest in mere destructive criticism. It wanted the progress that alone comes from constructive policies.

  His referring to “constructive policies” surely overlooks the scandals that came to haunt the Harding administration. Also, by taking 1900 as the starting point for the despised “radicalism,” he must have been referring to the very progressivism whose principles and some of whose policies and programs he once espoused.

  The nation was undergoing a change from progressivism and internationalism to conservatism and isolationism. Coolidge’s own horizon had changed sharply with the events and experiences of 1920. He would not go to extremes—this was contrary to the core of his being. But he was drifting to the political, social, and economic right in many ways. The changes perceivable in 1920 would continue into the decade.

  During the interregnum in late 1920 there followed another round of honors, dinners, and meetings, and Coolidge dutifully attended all he could. He did avoid one: a dinner organized by the Roosevelt Club to honor Lodge. But the two men appeared together at a celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock.

  Down to the very end Coolidge maintained his full schedule as governor. It was evident from his letters to his father that he was relieved to be leaving the office and eager to take on the vice presidential duties. “This is my last Sunday as governor,” he wrote on January 2. “It will be a great relief to get out of the office.”

  Coolidge spent a good deal of time that last week packing and appointing several aides to posts in the state government. In one of his speeches in this period he said, “I regret I am leaving Massachusetts and will have to give up my friends and acquaintances here. I hope I shall make new friends. I think I shall. But no friends are like old friends, and old acquaintances, and no place like home.”

  Coolidge was in Boston for Channing Cox’s installation as governor, and then returned to Northampton for more packing and boning up on the duties of the vice president. After he had been governor for a week, Cox came across an envelope addressed to him. He opened the envelope and discovered it was a message from Coolidge.

  My dear Governor Cox—

  I want to leave you my best wishes, my assurance of support, and my confidence in your success.

  Cordially yours,

  Calvin Coolidge

  Coolidge traveled to Atlanta to deliver a speech, and then the Coolidges went to Asheville, North Carolina, for a two-week vacation. They next returned to Northampton for more packing. On one of the last days before taking the train to Washington, Coolidge strolled up and down Main Street in Northampton, visiting one last time with some of his old friends. He would appear in the doorway, and say,
“Well, I’ve come to say good-bye.” Then, after some pleasantries, he would go on to the next stop.

  The Coolidges now had to decide where to live. There was no official residence for the vice president. They soon learned—as had other vice presidential families before them—that they couldn’t afford, on the vice presidential salary of $12,000, to rent a house, much less buy one. Frank Stearns offered to lease one for them, but Coolidge refused. Outgoing Vice President Marshall had an $8-a-day two-bedroom apartment at the New Willard Hotel, and offered to give it up to the Coolidges, and they accepted. They would remain there throughout the vice presidential years.

  The inauguration took place on March 4. Coolidge took his oath in the Senate chamber and delivered his address there. The Coolidge speech lasted ten minutes, something of a record for brevity. After a short preamble he noted that the vice president’s major task was to preside over the Senate, and he devoted the rest of his speech to praising that body. “Whatever its faults, whatever its human imperfections, there is no legislative body in all history that has used its powers with more wisdom and discretion, more uniformly for the execution of the public will, or more in harmony with the spirit of the authority of the people which has created it, than the United States Senate.” He then went to the White House to witness Harding being sworn in on the White House East Portico.