‘Silent Cal’ breaks his long silence
The Biden years are underway. Change is the order of the day. It comes in the nick of time.
We are badly off track. For what ails us, let me put forward two modest proposals: modesty itself and a dollop of humor.
As for humor, what was good enough for Abraham Lincoln (and John Kennedy and Calvin Coolidge) should be good enough for us.
Lincoln, who was criticized for being too jokey at times, once said, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
According to newsman Tom Wicker, John Kennedy “lampooned politicians, politics, notions, men, systems, myths, himself, even his church.”
He spoofed a fat-cat audience of New Yorkers with a missive from his rich father informing him that family campaign donations were being curtailed. Paying for a landslide, Pa Kennedy was supposed to have said, was a waste of money.
Following a trip to Florida, Kennedy said that he heard plenty of complaints about the direction of the country from the rich, comfortable Republicans of Palm Beach. As a result, he said, “I’m (now) against my entire program.”
Asked by a little boy how he became a war hero, Kennedy answered, “It was entirely involuntary. They sank my boat.”
Long before the Bush presidencies, the sister of George H.W. Bush was seated next to Kennedy at a White House dinner. Nancy Bush Ellis asked JFK why. She was not well-known nor a person of distinction. “Nan,” the veteran of Bay State politics said, “you’re the only woman here who’s registered to vote in Massachusetts.”
Calvin Coolidge was famously tight-lipped. Approached by a woman at a White House reception who told him that she bet she could get him to say more than two words, the president replied, “You lose.”
It was certainly not a laughing matter when Vice President Coolidge became president in August 1923, following Warren Harding’s sudden death.
Even so, his youngest son managed a wisecrack at his dad’s expense. Working as a fieldhand on a New England farm, Calvin Junior was approached by a young tobacco picker like himself.
“If my father were president I certainly wouldn’t be working here,” the boy said.
“If my father were your father,” said Calvin Junior, “you would.”
Tragically, young Calvin would die the following summer of blood poisoning, the result of a blister he contracted while playing tennis. The blister refused treatment. (These were the days before penicillin.)
The president was devastated. He blamed himself. “I do not know why such a price was extracted for (my) occupying the White House.”
Coolidge wrote in his memoirs that “when (my son) went the power and the glory of the presidency went with him.”
“The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding.”
As president, Coolidge, who was an apostle of big business, small government and low taxation, was “competent, taciturn, and safe.” His spare personality produced a prose style, one critic said, that was shorn of “every superfluous participle, objective clause or conjunction.”
Coolidge, said biographer William Allen White, sent arrows “straight to the heart of the truth.”
“I tried to refrain from abusing people,” the retired president informed the reading public in 1929. “The words of a president have enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately.
“It would be exceedingly easy to … foment hatreds and jealousies, which by destroying faith and confidence would help nobody and harm everybody.”
He went on, “A president should not only not be selfish but ought to avoid the appearance of selfishness.”
“It is difficult,” Coolidge continued, “for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshippers. Constantly … assured of their greatness … they are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”
In addition to everything else, let’s hope for two things from Joe Biden. Despite these grim times, a good laugh once in a while. A judicious display of humor can, under the proper circumstances, dispel gloom, puncture pomposity, provide context, enhance objectivity, soften disagreements, and if we are real fortunate, alter the political landscape.
The second is some humility. Calvin Coolidge gets the last word:
“There is only one political strategy in which I have confidence, and that is to TRY to do the right thing and SOMETIMES be able to succeed.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.