Calvin Coolidge A tale of two Coolidges EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Calvin Coolidge was born on the Fourth of July, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He died in 1933, just a few years after leaving the presidency. And he's buried on top of a hill in his small hometown near the Green Mountains. His body rests silently beside many others in his family, including his 16-year-old son who died in the White House. WILLIAM JENNEY: This is William Jenney, the regional administrator with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. And we are standing in front of President Coolidge's gravesite here at the Plymouth Notch cemetery. It is a very simple grave site. It's on a steep hill. This land was too steep to farm, so they put it to another practical use. Notice on the gravestone itself, it says his name with his birth and death dates, but nothing else to indicate anything special other than the presidential seal at the top. Some people are surprised to see such a simple gravesite for a president. But it's very appropriate for him. He did say in his autobiography that, 'We draw our presidents from the people. I came from them. I wished to be one of them again.' LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: For this episode, I have a special tour guide. So, with me in the studio is Steve Pearlstein. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: Hi. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning economics columnist for The Washington Post, and Steve has also been my mentor here. He started the 'On Leadership' section. We've had a lot of conversations about leadership over the years. So, one thing that we're going to explore in the episode is how his legacy has changed over time and also how it's a lot more nuanced than this image of Silent Cal. Here we go. I'm Lillian Cunningham with The Washington Post. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: And I'm Steve Pearlstein. Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And this is the 29th episode of “Presidential.” PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Alright, Steve. So, Calvin Coolidge, was in the White House from 1923 -- when Warren Harding died -- until 1929. And he's been treated for many of the decades that followed his time in the White House as basically a caricature of a weak president. But more recently, something has happened with his legacy where he's become an admired conservative icon. So, in order for us to understand and explore this counter-narrative that has begun to spring up about him, why don't you first, Steve, just walk us through what the traditional narrative of Calvin Coolidge has been over the years. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: So the stick-figure portrait of Coolidge is first that he was a man of very few words. 'Silent Cal.' It was said that when he opened his mouth, a moth came out. And there's the story of the woman sitting next to him at a dinner party who said, 'Mr. President, my friend bet me that I couldn't get you to say three words here tonight.' To which the president is said to have immediately replied, 'You lose.' So, his quietness, his parsimony with words, was part of it -- 'Silent Cal' -- but also not only did he not say much, but that he didn't do anything -- that he was the original of the 'Do Nothing' presidents. So [his reputation was that he] said nothing, did nothing, was ridiculously conservative in his view of government, basically. ‘Best thing for government to do is to get out of the way.’ And he's also viewed as someone who is lazy, took naps every afternoon, was really just an accidental president. The editor of The Nation wrote upon his assuming the presidency -- which he did because of the death of his predecessor, Harding – “I doubt if the presidency has ever fallen into the hands of a man so cold, so narrow, so reactionary, so uninspirational, so unenlightened or who has done less to earn it than Calvin Coolidge.” At least certainly among the more liberal academic crowd, that has been the view of Calvin Coolidge. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Well, and he also precedes the Great Depression, and there has been a storyline that his presidency played some key role in setting us up for that. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: [The narrative is:] It was his inaction. It was his kowtowing to the business interests that allowed the Roaring Twenties to roar, that allowed the great stock market bubble to get created. It's this excessive period of laissez faire that caused the Great Depression. And in a sense, Coolidge is this sort of anti-FDR. If you think the New Deal was great, if you think the New Deal was the thing that modernized the United States and set it on the course to become the greatest power in the world and the greatest society in the world, then you have to dislike and you have to make fun of Calvin Coolidge. Because he was -- Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: The opposite. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: He set up the things that led to the Great Depression. So, there was a lot of politics involved, I think, in ridiculing Calvin Coolidge. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: There's been this movement under way, though, particularly in conservative circles, to really paint a new portrait of Coolidge. So, Steve, you decided to look into this new portrait for the episode, and you did three interviews. One is with a former presidential candidate who thinks Coolidge was, in fact, a skilled politician. Another interview you did was with a professor who gives more context to why Coolidge developed this silent persona. And the third conversation you had was with a biographer who argues that Coolidge actually does have a pretty strong economic legacy. So who's this first interview with, Steve? STEVE PEARLSTEIN: Among those who've really come to appreciate Coolidge's skill is another former Massachusetts politician, whom I've known actually most of my life. Like Coolidge, he served as a member of the Massachusetts legislature. Like Coolidge, he served as governor of Massachusetts. And like Coolidge, he ran as a candidate for president of the United States. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And that man is: STEVE PEARLSTEIN: Mike Dukakis. LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Alright, so let's take a listen. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: Well, thanks for doing this. MIKE DUKAKIS: Good to be with you. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: Calvin Coolidge became vice president; and then President Harding died unexpectedly in office, and he became president. And a lot of people at that time barely knew who he was, and they never expected that. You have looked at his history and you've concluded that he really wasn't so accidental. Talk about Calvin Coolidge as a politician -- as a Massachusetts politician. MIKE DUKAKIS: Nobody gave this to Coolidge. He was a kid from Vermont who went to Amherst College, settled in Northampton. And in his own interesting way, in a democratic Irish Catholic ward of Northhampton, he went out -- as did I -- rang every single doorbell and knocked on every door in his district and was elected to the Massachusetts legislature. And subsequently, he went on to be elected to the Senate, to become the Senate president, and then lieutenant governor and governor. And so, our career paths in many ways were really quite similar. He was also a grassroots politician -- spent lots of time out with people -- and was remarkably progressive. We think of Coolidge these days as being a conservative guy, when he was a very progressive governor and part of the progressive movement of the time. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: And so, as a good Republican, progressive Republican, Coolidge actually Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 supported women's suffrage. He supported the right to join unions. He supported legislation for shorter work weeks and child labor laws and minimum wages. He supported the idea of an old age pension, what we now know as social security. MIKE DUKAKIS: Strongly for that. And as the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, he strongly supported universal health insurance for the people of Massachusetts. In fact, one of his friends got a hold of him and said, 'Cal, aren't you going a little overboard here?' But people like Coolidge at the time thought that working Americans and their families ought to have access to decent health care. And he said so. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: So, his record on labor issues was so good that, in fact, he was asked to mediate a big strike in Lawrence in 1913. Talk about that. MIKE DUKAKIS: The IWW strike was one of the great labor struggles in this country, as well as in the state of Massachusetts. And it wasn't going anywhere and it was very tough and it was very angry -- and it was Coolidge, as senate president, who went up to Lawrence and basically told those mill owners that they ought to pay their workers another 25 cents an hour. And 25 cents an hour in those days was a lot of money. We don't think of Coolidge as somebody who would do that kind of thing. Point in fact, he did. And again, it was another reason why I think he was so popular. STEVE PEARLSTEIN: You know, it appeared as if it was an accident that he got nominated for vice president -- because the two leading contenders basically fought to a draw.