The Book, the Man, and the Venue — Calvin Coolidge

Book Review — "Calvin Coolidge: The American Presidents Series" by David Greenberg

Welcome back to “The Book, the Man and the Venue”, my weekly newsletter that aims to shed light on every U.S. president in a way that is engaging, informative, and hopefully, fun!

Every Monday, I’ll be releasing a new article in which I chronicle my journey through one biography for each U.S. President. Each post will consist of three parts: I’ll offer a brief review of the biography (the Book), share reflections on the president’s character and legacy (the Man), and choose a location where I would spend time with the president if they were alive today (the Venue).

Hopefully, you will find the content both enriching and enjoyable, and if you like what you read, please consider checking out my other articles (and subscribing if you don’t already)!

Without further ado: Calvin Coolidge

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The Book

Calvin Coolidge by David Greenberg

While silent Cal Coolidge may seem like a somewhat boring figure at first glance – American essayist H.L. Mencken once quipped that Coolidge’s ideal day is “one in which nothing whatever happens” – David Greenberg’s rendition of his life gives no impression of such a case. Rather, Greenberg paints the picture of an enigmatic man who was a “transitional president at a transitional time”; one who embodied “the cherished ideals of a fading order while giving silent benediction to the ethos of a new age.”

Greenberg’s book, despite its brevity, is punchy, dynamic, and engaging. While the book is admittedly narrow in breadth, what it chooses to cover it does so exceedingly well. Much like its subject, Mencken’s novel is sparing in words, but not ideas. It paints the picture of a remnant of time long past, a man who “in his anxious acceptance of the era’s ballyhoo and roar…reflected and defined the 1920s.” Upon reading Mencken’s edition, one can only wish that the author had more leeway to write an in-depth account of Coolidge’s life. That book, perhaps, could have been exceptional. 

Mencken’s book is based on a few central premises. First, that Coolidge was more of a “bridge between two epochs” than a “vestige of Victorianism.” The author thoughtfully argues that Coolidge was much more modern in his approach towards governance than he is given credit for (particularly in his use of radio and the press), and suggests that categorizing Coolidge as a throwback to the 19th century is both disingenuous and inaccurate. Further, Mencken suggests that although Coolidge left a lasting legacy for conservatives, his own record was “neither substantial nor enduring.” The author blames Coolidge’s lack of vision in this respect, suggesting that “too many problems, left unaddressed, mounted; too many causes languished unpursued.” 

Overall, Greenberg’s book is remarkably successful. Both the introduction and conclusion could be self-contained works in themselves, and the author shows great touch in making Coolidge seem more interesting than he is traditionally portrayed. While the first few chapters proceed at breakneck speed – Coolidge is already 46 years old and governor of Massachusetts by the end of Chapter 1 – the book settles in near its halfway point and is generally paced appropriately. I enjoyed the author’s use of anecdotes to make Coolidge seem contemporary, and thought each of the book’s chapters were tailored purposefully and appropriately. 

Like all books from the American Presidents Series (APS), Mencken’s novel is unfortunately brief and cursory. It glosses over the death of Coolidge’s son, and generally lacks details about his personal life which would have made the story more engaging. Nonetheless, for a book of its length, Greenberg's rendition was about all a reader could ask for. Will it make you stop your day to rethink the Roaring Twenties? Probably not. But will it convince you to pick up another book on Calvin Coolidge? I would argue yes. 

Rating: 6.6/10

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The Man

There are not many people who spend their time thinking about the Presidents between Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Coolidge, in particular, is a president whose memory has faded with the passing of time. After all, what is there to remember about a president who didn’t say much and spent the majority of his time in office sleeping?

And yet, when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, “one of the first changes he made on entering the White House in January was to take down the portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman in the Cabinet Room and put up those of Dwight Eisenhower and Calvin Coolidge.” What was it about Coolidge that made him so appealing to Reagan and so many other conservatives?

As Greenberg explains: 

“To Reagan and his supporters, Coolidge represented an ideal. They shared with him not just a belief in small government but also its flip side: a faith in a mythic America in which hardworking, God-fearing neighbors buffered one another from hardship. Both men felt confident that private virtue could check the threat of moral decay brought on by modern changes. Where Reagan pined for the small towns of the 1920s, Coolidge waxed nostalgic for the nineteenth-century Vermont of his youth, a world of McGuffey’s Readers and toil on the farm, Congregationalist churches and town meetings. Less a censorious Puritan than a pious man of sentimental faith, Coolidge shunned the era’s new secularism as well as its resurgent fundamentalism; he saw religion as a source of virtue, not of division, oppression, or intellectual limitation.

Business, likewise, was for him benign, not predatory. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Progressive Era reforms had countered some of the worst depredations of the unfettered capitalism of the Gilded Age. By the 1920s, a view was emerging that capitalists’ new sense of social responsibility would preclude the need for aggressive federal intervention in the marketplace. Coolidge shared this view. A believer in the regnant economic orthodoxy of Say’s Law—the notion, propounded by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, that supply creates its own demand—Coolidge held that industrial productivity, by generating prosperity, would serve the general good. Indeed, he equated the public interest not with some consensus brokered to satisfy competing social factions but with something close to the needs of industry itself. He wanted, as he once said, ‘to encourage business, not merely for its own sake but because that is the surest method of administering to the common good.’”

Studying and understanding Coolidge thus remains more valuable than it might seem; he is a president whose ideological tenets form the bedrock of contemporary conservatism and the trickle-down economic theory which sits at the heart of Reaganism. 

Like his political ideology, there is more to Coolidge’s personal life than meets the eye. Although the common perception is that Coolidge was a lazy man with a big temper and few words, historian Robert Gilbert believes that Coolidge had a serious case of mental illness driven by his son Calvin Jr.’s death in 1924. According to Gilbert, it was only after his son’s death when Coolidge truly became the man he is popularly remembered as today; he began napping more, discussing policy less, and would often snap at his staff for no reason. The heart of these trends, suggests Gilbert, was that Coolidge blamed himself for his son’s death. He believed that if he hadn’t been president, his son would never have been playing on the White House tennis courts, which is where he had contracted the blood poisoning that suddenly killed him.

Regardless of what happened, Coolidge’s silence masked a surprisingly dry sense of humor. One hostess who knew how quiet he was by nature told him that she had made a bet that she could get more than two words out of him. His response: a cool “You lose.” Similarly, when Calvin Coolidge received his first paycheck as president, his only words to the messenger sent by the Treasury Department were “call again.”

Even Calvin Jr., before his passing, seemed to inherit his father’s sense of humor. On the morning after his father took the oath of office, Calvin Jr. went to work bundling tobacco in the fields. One of his coworkers quipped, “If my father were president, I wouldn’t be working in a tobacco field.” To which Calvin replied, “If my father were your father, you would.”

I must admit, I have enjoyed my time reading about Calvin Coolidge. He is a man who, behind his mask of silence, had a remarkably unique blend of ideology, turmoil, and wit. In a time when we often look for larger-than-life heroes, Coolidge’s story is a gentle reminder of the strength that can be found in simplicity and conviction.

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The Venue

Perhaps more than any other president, Calvin Coolidge had a natural fondness for animals. Indeed, throughout his time in the Oval Office, Coolidge and his wife Grace would take up a variety of wild beasts as pets (including a hippo named Billy and two lion cubs which Coolidge aptly named “Tax Reduction” and “Budget Bureau”). 

A personal favorite pet of Grace’s was a raccoon named Rebecca. As described by Smithsonian Magazine: 

Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine

“Hoping to win Coolidge over, a cohort of well-intentioned admirers shipped him a live raccoon with the intent of having it roasted as the centerpiece of his Thanksgiving dinner. But the Coolidges, finding the raccoon sweet and friendly, couldn’t bear to see her killed—and so it was out of the frying pan and into the arms of the First Lady. Just a few short weeks later, the newest member of the Coolidge household got gussied up for Christmas, adorned in a red ribbon. Among the presented piled high by the Christmas tree was a shiny new collar, bearing the title ‘Rebecca Raccoon of the White House.’

Like many other Coolidge pets, Rebecca was spoiled rotten. While she had likely dined in dumpsters before her relocation to Washington, D.C., Rebecca’s diet in the White House consisted of chicken, eggs, green shrimp, persimmons and cream. According to Amity Shlaes, author of Coolidge, Rebecca was often toted around in her own basket by Grace, making public appearances at summer parties and Easter egg rolls. Just as often, Rebecca could be found draped around Coolidge’s neck like a masked scarf as he went about his daily duties.

Eventually Rebecca got too unruly even for the Coolidges. After she made several botched escape attempts, they reluctantly moved her to the National Zoo. Fearing she might be lonely in her new home, Coolidge and Grace even found her a male companion named Reuben—but their blind date was, alas, ill-fated, and Reuben eventually fled the zoo.”

While I'd love to visit the zoo with Coolidge, I’ve unfortunately already done that with Zachary Taylor. Instead, I'll stay on brand by taking Coolidge to watch an old silent film. I’m sure he’d appreciate the minimal dialogue, and ironically he wouldn’t even recognize how outdated the production has become. Of course, if movies aren't his thing, we can always go smoke a cigar in his native Vermont—another pastime which he greatly enjoyed.

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I hope that you’ve enjoyed this installment of “The Book, the Man, and the Venue.” If you have feedback about today’s issue, or thoughts about future topics, please feel free to send me a message.

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