Amity Shlaes, Author, "Coolidge"

this week on Q&A author and columnist Emma T slays discusses her latest historical narrative titled Coolidge Amity slays author of Coolidge when did you first get interested in this president I was writing my recent book forgotten man and everything was broken forgotten man is a book about the 30s and how the economy was broken and I thought what happened before and there was a period when it was fixed and that was the 20 and that was Calvin Coolidge's so I thought this is the prequel I've got to go back and figure out what went right in the 20s free did that talk about him I mean do you read about him today and I guess the first question I'd ask could he be elected president today I think so that's really the challenge of the book whether we can choose someone who's as principled as he is as president he did not believe Coolidge who was president from 23 to 29 that perception is reality he thought principle was reality reality is reality so the challenge for us often is we just have to have someone who is good looking and speaks well good salesmen or can we have someone who's got principles and I do think we can we kind of deceive ourselves generally that we need looks alone perception alone who did he put around him so very important question Coolidge came into office from being vice president unfortunately the president Warren Harding died so there's a cabinet there and some of them are compromised we remember Harding was a period of scandal so do you keep them and the modern position might be our political advisors would say clean sweep right broom out get them out so you will have the appearance of integrity but Coolidge also prized respect for Harding those people weren't condemned yet innocent till proven guilty and continuity for the sake of the people and market so he kept the cabinet for a while eventually some people left Daugherty you see the Secretary of the Interior left the figures who were compromised in the Harding administration eventually left and Coolidge did have an investigation in a bipartisan team that's very modern to look into corruption in the Harding administration but he thought first of continuity when he became president that moment in August 1923 who was his secretary of the Treasury well that was the same guy that would be Andrew Mellon who was his and Harding's before him and Hoover's after Mellon was a great figure like Alan Greenspan today or Ben Bernanke though he was Treasury secretary it was said of Mellon that three presidents served under him he was how does that relate to the Mellon name that we know now the Mellon Bank Oh who was melon melon was a very wealthy man he made much of his money he created an empire in Pittsburgh of steel aluminum was melons he melon was also what we might call a venture capitalist he would he would give a man money if a man had a good idea see what happened maybe in the end sell his share when the man succeeded but sometimes he butted in sometimes he didn't to the process but he loved new ideas he created a whole Institute to generate patents very production-oriented not just at what we say rent seeker not just someone who bought what other people had and held on to it like a monopoly a creator of wealth so Mellon came to this job the job of Treasury secretary with a wealth of experience from the private sector and a few convictions and his best partner among the presidents I believe David Kennedy and the Mellon biographer would say this too was cool that you understood Mellon one thing we have to admire about Coolidge's he knew how to work with other men it wasn't all about Calvin he died at age 60 right after he got out of the presidency what happened what was what was his health like well a lot of them did I think we're blessed with the angio were blessed with statins with Crestor men now know exactly how well their heart is doing and it's pretty clear yet something cardio going on you see men dying all the time in politics and especially in the presidency then Harding died essentially from Coolidge that Harding was tired out wore himself out his predecessor Wilson had that terrible stroke and never really recovered so the two preceding presidents had been killed the Coolidge was proud he made it I don't think he was aware of the extent to which his heart was bad until the end it something was really wrong we got some video that was spoken by Calvin Coolidge at the White House it may have been the first video of the president speaking let's watch so people can see what he sounded like and look like I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves I want them to have the rewards of their own industry this is the chief meeting of freedom until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our Liberty again forget the the principles that he had but he no teleprompter reading off a piece of paper somewhat halting high voice all that could you think he could make it in the television age I do I do he actually they wondered that about him then of course the new technology then was radio and it turned out radio was a blessing for him because he had a little bit of a little bit of wire in his voice I said and it caught through apparently a very good radio voice he thought he was on radio there and he read as though on the radio but it's more his personality comes through I don't I don't think we should condemn people if they don't appear to us telegenic the chapter that I thought was was most illuminating about him as a person was and I'm not sure that you pronounce this with the Odin what it what is that what does that chapter this is a when you get to college the outsider that's Greek he happened to go to Amherst College very interesting College it had a motto let them illuminate the earth basically College for ministers or future ministers generally Congregationalist although there were other denominations there in Massachusetts and Coolidge went down there and at the time he went that down there it was a Greek school by a Greek I mean it had a lot of fraternities that there were fraternities were all over and most kids were in them and what's interesting about Calvin and this is all the way through his life true Brian he didn't seem like he was going to make it he got there he kind of thought he should be in a fraternity he rode his father we have a letter saying something about that before he got there and then he he wasn't chosen so imagine being in a very Greek school with boys richer than you and being kind of shy he wasn't chosen and and I think this is partly we think of this when we see our families wasn't sure he wanted to be chosen wasn't sure he wanted to give up that much of himself to a group but what it's always nice to be asked and he was quite disappointed I think when he wasn't asked and there's an interesting store there there was another boy at Amherst at that time called Dwight who was actually poorer than Calvin maybe shorter and had a little physical disability but Dwight was a happy boy and much loved and went into a fraternity and Coolidge knew him they lunched together once in a while and apparently Dwight blackballed Coolidge at one point for a fraternity when Coolidge was going to come in we have a letter that says of Dwight said not him I'll take the other one well Dwight was one of those friends you have who thinks it over and changes his mind and has great regret and Dwight decided he had underrated Calvin and that Twite was Dwight Morrow who then went to law school became a big partner at JPMorgan in fact when JP Morgan was kind of down Dwight liked on dogs and eventually Calvin as president sent Dwight to patch it up with Mexico in a terrible time Dwight was our representative our ambassador there and that he had a daughter called Anne Morrow and Coolidge sent down Charles Lindbergh to cheer up the Mexicans to bring some comity to the place and that is how Anne Morrow Lindbergh became Anne Morrow Lindbergh so a lot of history came out of that very sort of understated a little bit sad a beginning of undergraduate life at Amherst for Calvin Coolidge but when you read about him and his personality it it defies logic that this man could end up being present in United States because of his was called an oddball called cry silent cow how silent was he he was very silent we have many stories you know there's a famous story of Calvin where a lady said I bet I could get you to say more than two words at this dinner mister sir maybe he was vice president Grace Coolidge told the story his wife and he said you lose was that Dorothy Parker I don't think so but it was told Dorothy Parker said when he died who could tell a very mean comet and I want to say if you go back and look at Coolidge he was a conservative hero and then his tax rate was a gold standard tax rate that we saw in the video 25 percent was what he got the top rate down to and he fought like crazy it started remember with Wilson in the 70s so that was an epic battle and when you go look at what all the socialites said about Coolidge in Washington how cold he was he wouldn't meet with them you want to remember that they were probably also from families that endorsed different policies especially Alice Roosevelt Longworth whose father had a different model of president TR it was a let's get him go active bully pulpit presidency and here was Coolidge prissy and cold and not giving out favors so she said he looked as though he'd been weaned on a pickle Coolidge's silence was cultural he was from New England farmers don't talk a lot or wave their arms about because a cow might kick them you know if you've lived a and it was temperamental of temperament he was a shy person but it also had a political purpose he knew that if he didn't talk a lot people would stop talking and of course a president or a political leader is constantly bombarded with requests and his silence was his way of not giving in to special interests and he articulated that quite explicitly Brian go back again to the college experience though you say he liked to learn to like to speak how did that come in and did he ever get in a fraternity he ever he got in a fraternity at the end at the very end senior year and it was a new one on campus uh so and he was proud he wrote his father the letters to his father are beautiful that Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation published them and they're hard to find I hope we can publish them again they're fabulous he wrote his father I you know I have to have a pin all through his life you see him writing his father who wasn't at all rich but wasn't totally poor a sort of important person in his little town I need this I need the pin I need the cane I need the overcoat I need the so I need this but it was very late last term basically senior year that Coolidge got and I think his classmates Amherst is a small college now and it wasn't recognized something in him when he began to speak he was thoughtful and he they we want to say also this is interesting about their education there was a great emphasis on rhetoric in education so the kids had to speak a lot and they began to hear me and a teacher he loved very much Charles Garman a lot of us like Garmin and saw and Dwight like Garmin Dwight Maher so he began to have friends and feel he was in a club the club of this particular lecturer called Garmin who lecture and seminar and he spoke in class and the other boy said wait a minute it's a new man we don't recognize him wait a minute how come we didn't know you freshman year sophomore year we messed up in that wonderful way you can reevaluate someone in a classroom I got a picture that I want to show you is not in your book this is a picture from the courthouse yard area in north Hampton New Hampshire where he lived it's on the screen there and this has every job he's ever had on that on that statue ever seen that I don't think so I want to read you though because because we can go back and talk about this because I still want to know why you think he got all this he was born in Plymouth Vermont 1872 on this statue is what it says graduated Amherst 1895 admitted Massachusetts Bar 97-98 1898 City Councilor Northampton 90 1901 city solicitor Northampton 1906 state representative Massachusetts 1909 mayor the city of Northampton 1911 state senator of Massachusetts 1913 president of Massachusetts Senate 1915 217 lieutenant governor then governor of the state of Massachusetts and 18 and went on to be vice president in 1921 and president 23 how does it I've never seen anything quite like that where somebody's had that many jobs leading up to president and he almost never lost how did he do it he told someone you have a hobby my hobby is politics running for office is my hobby one thing was the the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were different and there was a path if you help the others they helped you he was in the party it was a club it wasn't to be entirely looked down upon the way we learned in school listen even then the progressive said he climbed the greasy pole of Massachusetts politics it wasn't just that there's some good in the party the party trains you it helps you work efficiently efficiently but it's also his incredible personal perseverance and that's what I try to get at in his the chapter about his time in Northampton mass that was the county seat so after college he looked around he couldn't really afford law school kind of bugged his father about it that could well we couldn't really afford it so he went to read the law the way they did then you could clerk and pass the bar that way with a firm of two men who liked Amherst and had been there and were important lawyers in the town running for office themselves and he looked around and learned about his county seat why don't I just try this whereas Dwight Morrow his friend into law school at Columbia and then went to important sort of Wall Street Bank law firm and then a bank so this was the old way the Thomas Jefferson kind of way of serving in the country don't be a city doll that's one of the things they read in college and he was good to the party the party was good to him he learned pragmatism a practice law on and off the whole time he was very careful not to be corrupt one of the issues of his use and a member his youth is the progressive Republican Party so he's looking at it and you can see a progressive record in Coolidge whether he's a state lawmaker let's do this about milk or he worked on busting trusts in theatres if you can imagine they saw trusts everywhere in the Progressive Era and the hero of that era was Theodore Roosevelt so he's thinking is this a good policy or not what progressives do hate the big fight the big reform government and clean it up well he kind of liked that part and he certainly had to work in it because he was often assigned to clean up government to prune to shut down offices but he's evaluating this the whole time I want to mention he had a mentor who was also silent I didn't know this till I began to research in Massachusetts at the Forbes library where much of his material is that was called W Murray crane as a senator senator crane who helped TR with coal strikes a crane was of the crane Paper Company so he was a businessman and the crane Paper Company there's a thing used to call the government plant printed the dollar so in a very interesting way crane knew about the US economy through the dollar through how much he printed and crane too was silent rarely spoke he was the Western Massachusetts leader versus the Boston leader in in Massachusetts politics and that was Coolidge's mentor how much of the crash of to 29 1929 could be blamed on Coolidge he left and what March March is 29 9 so you imagine the stock market that we look at this and why you Stern where I teach the stock market was a hundred for a long time then it about 200 very high Coolidge had seen a lot of recessions it doubled that's sort of like our 90s for example or also after Ward's with Napoleon if you look in past you see incredible doublings then it went to 381 that would be September 29 Coolidge didn't approve that he'd seen a lot of recessions he'd spend a lot of his life with the stock market at a hundred or below he knew all every sinew in him knew that was wrong he just didn't believe it was the job of the chief executive to intervene it was the state of New York where the New York Stock Exchange was where the Dow would be the Dow Jones Industrial the owner of The Wall Street Journal Dow Jones Clarence Baron but he didn't think the President or the Treasury secretary was really in charge of that remember the Fed was also young so he looked into it there's a record of him looking into it one another a nice man was Charles Merrill who founded what we would call Merrill Lynch and Merrill went to see him and they talked about it and Coolidge was terrified because he was so conservative and he knew what a crash was but he didn't see it as the president's role and neither did Merrill that would be a state authority I don't think you know another factor in that period was what Fed policy was and we all know Benjamin strong the great Fed leader died and another Fed came and maybe the Fed was too loose and that's an important discussion but I do not blame this on Coolidge in the least and one of the important factors you always want to look at is was the growth in the 20s real or Great Gatsby is coming out now was it all champagne and a lie the 20s growth was real most of it was real the stock market went too high people shouldn't about a margin but it was not a lie of a decade which is something that we learned in school that must be revised and this is an effort to do that revision to expose the true 20s where did you first start being interested in Calvin Coolidge do you remember the time just in in the Forgotten man it's about how the forgotten man the history of the 1930s that I wrote is about how the government came in starting with Herbert Hoover and messed it up messed up something good you know beyond the all the things Hoover did bigger government was Hoover and then Roosevelt Falls even bigger and more arbitrary government so I thought what was it that they messed up and I had to go back and write a new beginning to Forgotten men and show what it was that was lost in order to show the extent of the loss and I thought wow this is very interesting the economics of the 20s that we don't discuss them that much we kind of think they were historians tended to pick them as a lie Great Gatsby prohibition people not untruth economists tend to say wow that growth is interesting in real most of it and we talk about for example RC a radio Corp was described in some of the books the crash of the stock as a big lie just a bubble but radio Corp had an interesting invention on its mind what we would now call television that did turn out to be profitable much later so we look in economics sometimes markets overshoot when they're anticipating productivity gains the markets of the 20s or were really interesting the but would look at it from the point of view people the government the the single thing that Coolidge did that we want to remember is that when he left office the budget was lower than when he came in that's the story for us now in a period where we're concerned well how'd he do that the economy grew a lot maybe I maybe more than three percent sometimes unemployment was below five percent the budget was balanced due to his own parsimony how'd he manage though to keep a budget go lower and how did that help the economy a lot because he got the government out of the way of the economy very foreign to the way we talk about the economy now and that fascinate do you remember how big the budget was then well the number it depends how you counted but the way he counted it was about three billion so you wanna say about and then it would be less than five percent of the US economy and he was going to get it down to three billion and that was his his is Grail his Holy Grail and he had and the reason this book is so long is the middle section of the book is about his effort with another New Englander who was a general Lord from Maine to cut the budget they didn't just cut the tax rates they cut the budget and this is different from our modern supply siders who tend to put the tax rates first Coolidge always twinned them and you'll see a photo somewhere of two lion cubs he had someone gave him two lion cubs he said you you can't just cut taxes you have to cut budget and those lion cubs were named budget Bureau and tax reduction where did they reside they resided in the zoo they sent them to the Coolidge's loved animals but they sent a lot of them to the zoo pretty soon we'll come back to Calvin Coolidge a minute but let's go back to the Amity slays story where did you grow up I'm from Chicago where did you go to college I went to Yale College when you first came to us in 19 I think 1990 or so you were appeared on this network you were back from Germany how long did you spend in Germany I spent a few years in Germany I fortunately had a fellowship after college in Germany and got to do some journalism and then I joined The Wall Street Journal and I'm you know I'm interested in Germany now - I'm interested in East Europe what we used to call East Europe and the future of democracy and freedom there and all that they've achieved and what happened so my first work was on Germany because I had studied German and I worked as a journalist and wrote a book about Germany the empire within about Germans conception of who they were around the time of German unification I want to show you yourself oh I know but that's not very kind in 1993 20 years ago here you are I think the country will do just fine right now it's it's a people say that it'll be a big curve after reunification because of all the troubles that they have and I'd say they're going to be at the bottom of the curve this year and within 5 maybe 10 years Germany will have consolidated it will be a stronger country for the reunification but they are going through it recession now how'd you do then they did fine they did better than we thought they wondering now if Germany will come out of the euro maybe Germany is setting the model for for future economy in Germany is being like Calvin Coolidge because Germany is the saver country of Europe the question is how much it can it do to save Greece - to help the spenders from that time 1990 in that era your life has changed dramatically you you dedicate this book to Eli Theo flora and Helen who are they those are my four children my my four children with my husband Seth Lipsky the journalist and editor and our oldest son goes to the University of Texas our second son is a cadet at West Point we have a daughter flora who is in high school and helen is in let's see sixth grade now alter this period you've been fairly visible working that's right I'm a columnist where are you right I write for Bloomberg and how often I well it's a it's a regular column it's now it's it that stays less regular now because of various bumps but I've been a columnist for 10 years before that with the Financial Times Council on Foreign Relations do I am I am NOT with them no I was a fellow for in political economy there or in economic history I think for four years and I've recently moved over to a new foundation President Bush 43 foundation which is going to be wonderful I I'm interested in presidential history now President Bush is a wonderful man a great leader and a Republican president with an enormous archive attached at the new George W Bush Center in Dallas so I like to research I really like Coolidge's history and want to help it and I wanted to learn a bit in at a presidential center and to work on economics we I am in a program called the 4% growth program which is about economic growth Coolidge had it but what's that mystery what was it let's think about it and the 4% growth project looks at different ways you can get stronger growth we all know that stronger growth makes everything easier including of course the entitlement problem still teach at New York University I do yes what do you teach I teach actually the forgotten man the 1930s the economics of the 1930s which are very controversial so that's fun is it right is it wrong you know so if we followed you around the last few years studying Calvin Coolidge where would we find you that's important to say I'm a trustee of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation which is a great entity and if you wanted know Coolidge you go to Plymouth notch we're from off from where he's from Vermont it's a beautiful village well preserved the foundation is there the state is there they have a state archivist mr. Jenny we have our own foundation there where we do some education we have some material and in fact this summer with the bush Center we're hosting a high school economic debate how perfect for Coolidge around the time that's the anniversary of his midnight swearing-in by his father in early August so a lot of young debaters will come from a Dartmouth clinic over and debate at the Coolidge place once you've been to Plymouth notch you see how simple his background was his father wrote him down the road ten miles bumpy road snow freezing sleighs to get him to high school and what he overcame to be calm president I want to mention some other Coolidge places though beyond the Forbes library in Northampton Massachusetts which hasn't been a great partner for me and helped me there's also the Vermont archive in Barre Vermont where many of the Coolidge family papers can be found well taken care of I encourage a visit there too to any Coolidge scholar I want to ask you a question about something in the analogous and what you think Calvin Coolidge who was so frugal personally would think you got a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities oh he would be ambivalent about that I mean you can see the ambivalent he didn't really like federal money to be spent on culture once in a while he would do it and he was and you see that in his own President Coolidge doesn't have a Presidential Library with a staff funded by Washington the way President Roosevelt would have or president Hoover would have or president that presidents Bush have that he was old time he thought it's a wonderful story also of love for his wife he at that time he thought a president should raise his own money for himself all of it right all of it and he loved his wife very much Grace and she sacrificed a lot she was originally a teacher of the Deaf at the Clark School in Northampton Massachusetts so he told his friend Clarence Baran raised me money from afterwards and Behrens had anything Calvin very close to the Wall Street Journal this is a Wall Street Journal story anything Calvin ok I'll raise money for and everyone thought well it should be for the Coolidge archive right that's what it's supposed to be and he wanted it to be at a local library the Forbes library where he'd studied reading the law named after another savor this judge forms a legendary figure in Northampton Calvin said no let the money be raised from my wife's charity the Clark School for the Deaf so he took the money that would have preserved him and instead poured it into her charity that's a great gift of love and we need to think about it you see why maybe he felt he was a little frail she had given up a lot for him she called marriage a harness she and she loved him but she knew it was a harness to they push together and forward and he wanted to pay her back and he knew she might be around decades after him and he wanted her to be the important lady in the town and she was because she was the chief patron and owner of the Clark School for the Deaf they gave the money to that so he cut off your nose to spite your historical face right he gave his money to her you say in your book and that we noticed a lot of this is happening lately that you read the diaries of his doctor why are these presidential doctors and they're doing it today publishing their their Diaries I don't think some of its published some of it isn't we went to the archive I'm not wild about the doctor the doctor is a little creepy I just sort of had strong opinions about the family the is mean to the wife Calvin you know a marriage is a complicated thing and no one can ever know all of it and I don't envy the white house first couples because everyone is it's really a court and everyone's always edging to favor one or the other and the husband has his court the president and the first lady has a court and then they fight with each other like the czars the cool Jews had a minimum of that because they were good people but it was there and the doctor sided with mrs. Coolidge she was a wonderful person the extrovert to his introvert and they played off each other but he knew that she was the extrovert she knew why he was the introvert and I their marriage is admirable in an interesting way you can see in that post presidency gift how did you get on the Foundation Board of the Calvin Coolidge foundation just out of affection for it it is a worthy place that requires support and if I can do anything to help I'm not rich but if I can do anything to help bring others there to support the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation I will we have a great director mr. Serra ser RA and that's it's it's Coolidge's mecca it's where is the foundation anyway it's his place you go to it changes people's lives when they see these houses you drive a North passed Ludlow Vermont where there's a little ski resort on the big road it's not hard to get to it's not much farther than say Bellows Falls a Brattleboro like that you just drive up and you'll see something amazing you can stay in one of those ski resorts like Hawk Mountain or the little bed-and-breakfast around it it's not that far from Dartmouth College which is in New Hampshire this planet not is not Vermont and it's it's simple and it will change your life in your your life and your children's if you see it you can see the room upstairs where he worked you can see the church where one of his ancestors bought a Pew got very involved in the town records too because the Coolidge's were allergic to death they were terrified of death this is a book as a story of how you overcome debt as a country or as an individual and we found that there was this one ancestor who was a debtor that's what the book opens with because you know the but this was their economics their business their small farms were were so important in their lives and so you can just have a feel for how hard it was in Vermont in that time got some video from a program we did in 1999 on presidents and his son John was still alive oh that's wonderful he's very old in this I think how was he when he died was oh I don't know but even his 90s I know that and it's not so long ago that John did you ever talk to him I did not he was born around oh let's see around 1906 okay let's watch this and you have to listen carefully but he's talking about his brother Calvin who and I wanted to get that story Oh Calvin you you mentioned your brother brother Calvin jr. do you have any fond memories of him that you'd like to relate well we were always together we were going together the pair of school together vism fine boy sorry Bren employer I had trouble keeping up with him since school this is better pair of socks collar and I heard he was quiet joining some of the things that I did firstly if not it was interested in the baseball which I was so the impact of Calvin jr. on the Coolidge presidency this is it like a Lincoln story it's amazing tragedy Calvin jr. was about 16 and he got a blister on the tennis court of the White House and the blister went septic and he died within about a week if you can imagine your from a blister to death just before antibiotics came in again you know were affected by these things and antibiotics and so what a story and there was nothing they could do about it Coolidge had lost his sister he had lost his mother and now he was losing Calvin Lewis Laak child of the family indeed as you can hear from a happy guy very very clever extremely loyal and he didn't know what to do I think the other historians have told the story of the death of Calvin is the end of the Coolidge presidency this was in 1924 he was elected that year on his own four more years I don't and they say well he was depressed for the next four years there's a book that's pretty good Gilbert that's the thesis I don't see that it's not a story of yes but the death of Calvin it's but yes that he persevered the president notwithstanding a blow almost no one he nor grace could understand there the life of their family and you see a lot of sorrow and anger and trouble he took a tree from the Limekiln lot of his family in Plymouth and they planted it somewhere around the White House I've not been able to discern the what happened to that tree I'm not sure it made it you can always take a spruce and replant it in Washington soil but can you imagine they planted it so they could look out the window near the tennis court and see where Calvin had been and the President himself said the joy of the presidency went out for me but I see him pursuing in a grand campaign his his civil war was the tax campaign he poured his energy into that instead and did prevail in the tax campaign in 1926 won the presidency outstandingly can you imagine your son dies and then you you win in 1924 as president beating the third party the Progressive Party and the Democrats combined the Republicans had the absolute majority in 24 even though a lot of the progressives were former Republicans so he had he was tremendously popular because of his perseverance in part but this story of Calvin it just came over them and you can see after the presidency mrs. Coolidge fell free to write about Calvin which he hadn't they had a tremendous ro about their child in public very reserved people very conscious of station but after afterwards there's a poem that we have that she wrote and of course it changes their life forever Calvin said it Calvin was the child who expresses the things you want expressed but I want to give credit to John too for for opening the window to Calvin so lovingly not competing with him Calvin said when he worked in the tobacco field that's the photo week so someone said well if you know if my if my dad were vice president president I sure wouldn't work in any tobacco field and in Massachusetts Calvin said if your dad were my dad you would the Coolidge's wanted their kids to work the Coolidge's emphasized virtue of what what a contrast it's a big contrast from the Roosevelts where the kids ran around the house a lot and made a lot of noise and it was fun you can see this from the tell-alls by the servants but sometimes you know were a bit rambunctious I think they had an animal ride around in the White House the Roosevelts the Coolidge's were rigid with their kids about behaving in the White House and a kind of joyless way from time to time Coolidge was extremely hard on John who went to Amherst and the low point of his life are the letters to John which are in the Barrie archive worried he berates John for not performing well in college so every tragedy like the loss of a child has an effect they suffered from the loss of Calvin but they did persevere and what I like about John I wish I had known him was he was so good about preserving his father's legacy he understood and he was a wonderful man in that way with incredible empathy and you for example the cheese factory in Plymouth notch which was the president's father's they they wanted to make money from Dairy it's always a struggle they had a cheese factory because before refrigeration cheese was the way you transmitted protein John started that again as a symbol of what it meant to be a struggling farmer and it was important to Coolidge because he always vetoed agricultural subsidy farmers never have made much money he said but that didn't mean he didn't understand hard it was to be a farmer so how do you working now for george w bush and that foundation or his foundation how do you how do you line up the fact that he had a five trillion dollar addition to the debt but these are questions we have to ask a lot of presidents and I am historically an economically oriented person and I see that wars cost a lot of money so let's just say that first of all but one of the splendid things about george w bush is his great big spirit so if I came up to the President and I don't report to him it's a real foundation doing work in many areas including for example curing cervical cancer in Africa which president and said President Bush you were wrong about Medicare Part D he would say well maybe I was or maybe he would say I wasn't wrong but he has no trouble creating an intellectual home for people with different ideas who might say something that might not be totally where he was or flatter him he is in that he is very much like Coolidge he is not an arsonist he is not a vain man President Bush he wants to serve and there's a connection there with both bushes and Coolidge it's their sense of service their spiritual side somewhat I would say their piety they know that it's an office that we're serving and I see in President Bush to a very little vanity about the foundation that's like Coolidge after Coolidge was out of office it wasn't about him and that's incredibly hard to do once you've been the most important person in the world you've got to stay we all know that person right if once you've been on television all your life very few people are not vain afterwards excepting you Brian so so how do you overcome that suppress vanity and serve this preoccupies President Bush let me make another connection here Vice President Bush became president in many people's eyes because he was the vice president with Ronald Reagan and then his son George W Bush became president because the fame of the name Bush and you say in your book that the two things that made calvin coolidge president was the Boston police strike and the fact that he was picked his vice-president so let's start with the vice-president thing how did he and it wasn't a foregone conclusion how was he chosen how was cool it shows yes yes this is well this is very important to imagine now we have this problem of public sector unions we might like the people in them but they're asking a lot or Reagan had the air traffic controllers they were in a union patco they were good guys they were asking a lot in the case of Reagan impacto they were jeopardizing public safety the public because planes are important they can crash so Coolidge had an analogous situation as governor of Massachusetts and for because of certain anomalies in their law the governor had a stay say in the police story in Boston the policemen of Boston went on strike after World War one they were nice guys they were underpaid there was a terrible inflation nobody was acknowledging their station houses had rats people chewed on your little rodents chewed on their helmets 18 ways they deserved a raise they deserve better treatment they were overworked nonetheless they walked off and this is a very rough time in American history much rougher there was chaos and violence and rioting and looting in Boston so Coolidge was on the team the leader of it that fired these policemen they you know they went in a union with Sam Gompers not even a very radical Union Union the Union that was a favorite of President Wilson but Coolidge said no right to strike against the public safety by anybody anywhere anytime except the order of that but those were the three phrases no right to strike against the public safety I'm drawing a line and he what's incredibly scary about this from a political point of view was he in an election a few months away he liked Irishmen he was famous for getting the Irish vote the policemen were Irish he's firing them they're nice they're horses love them what a bold controversial move why was it at all good nobody knew at first the that it was good is there's limit to what a public sector Union should do and jeopardize the city's safety is too far and after that move the unions in the cities when there didn't do that anymore and the city's felt safer and commerce was easier after that rough period he received national recognition including from Wilson who will Don the same issue for his bravery he did win election again even though he had turned his back on these Irishmen even though he felt terrible about it and that gave him natural national stature and it's why he was chosen he thought he would be chosen for president so well you paint a picture about Woodrow Wilson going across the country promoting the League of Nations at the same time that Coolidge is governor of Massachusetts dealing with a strike and how did they stay in touch in those days and what did Wilson contribute to that whole debate well that's interesting I they didn't really stay in touch I mean you Coolidge might call the Navy or somebody defend War Department for help and you do see some traffic which from Franklin Roosevelt who was at Navy in this whole issue of the strike and the port city need to police it need to feed it you know would there be a general strike but Wilson communicated through Sam Gompers who'd gone to Versailles was the Union Statesman his friend who had kept labor quiet during the war let me just back up a little bit for Samuel Gompers was what did he run American Federation of Labor AFL so he was the good labor guy and why would he have gone to Versailles what was going on how's the future of European workers and American workers is important we knew that there was going to be revolution in Europe there was already revolution in Europe you think of imagine the Soviet Union is being formed now maybe Germany is going communist - what year was the boussard meeting well this would be 1918 1919 1920 we had unemployment in the US we had our budget had gone up you know it was 1 billion - went to 18 billion 18 times we were we wondered whether we were bankrupt from World War one all this is going on so you need to keep the peace right and that's what Sam Gompers was and the police of Boston affiliated with Gompers thinking they'd be safe doing whatever they did because they were on President Wilson's side but they all those policemen were actually the whole bunch of them were fired they were all fired they were any heart I don't know except the ones who stayed that the ones we would call scabs the ones or whatever the ones who stayed at you know not all they hired new ones and that was to make a point that's rough to turn justice of the very old-fashioned variety that we find incredible today so but Wilson waffled and if you read in that chapter you'll see him on one day he's kind of on the side of the public sector unions he had his own strike to deal with coming or maybe in Washington that he was in charge of Washington DC he was completely preoccupied Statesman I have to keep labor quiet so I can sell the League of Nations right imagine you know the way a president would have to so many issues choosing among them very tired about to have a stroke and there's these Boston policemen and needn't know how to deal with that and he just kind of puts it off in the governor of Massachusetts deals with it and said that was Coolidge and then Wilson says pretty good okay I accept that because the unions can't go too far even Gompers was ambivalent how was Calvin Coolidge picked to be vice president well he thought he would win but that was a little mean for president yes he did because he had this national stature of showing how tough he was just the way we would have a governor now doing that and but he had a problem Henry Cabot Lodge the senior senator from Massachusetts a great snob an institution in the Senate the the nominal the titular not nominal but really the leader of the Senate Lodge wasn't sure he liked Coolidge Lodge was vain and it was all about Lodge and the Coolidge's there Coolidge is all over Massachusetts as big Massachusetts named Coolidge was some kind of swamp backwood Coolidge the governor not the kind of Coolidge that that Lodge knew from Harvard right they considered Amherst backwards and he didn't really take Calvin Coolidge seriously and he also toyed with him at times he told him he thought he might be a good candidate other times not so if your own State is not for you at the convention Chicago surely you're not going to be nominated to be the president and Coolidge didn't even actually go to that convention in Chicago we've heard about the Blackstone Hotel in the smoke-filled rooms and how harding was chosen a senator to be president but there was a bit of a rebellion that the senate was running the whole thing at chicago the republican convention and out of that rebellion someone said i'm going to nominate a governor not they thought lane rout would be a mild in between progressive Republican from the Midwest they thought he would be and instead they said let's get a governor so it was a westerner who stood up and said Coolidge for vice-president he's a governor let's have him and there was a lot of pause all of a sudden at a convention and that's how Coolidge got it unexpectedly and I would estimate two lodges displeasure you say then after Calvin Coolidge was elected in 2024 as the president fully elected after the death of Harding and all that that his vice president was Charles Dawes and that they didn't like each other he didn't like dogs what was that all about some of that was his own sanctimony and some of that was the Dawes was impossible he was a rogue deputy from help how did he get well Dawes is a wonderful man he was in charge of basically procurement and distribution in World War one getting stuff for the generals to the front line so he gave a famous speech called the Helen Marija speech where someone was picking at how he spent money and to get stuff to the front line to win the war he said Helen morena Maria we would do anything to win that war and then he went the other way slim boy and figure very good speaker and was in charge of cutting the budget after the war and a crucial job we should look at now when we're writing a new budget law because they had this budget law where they created a budget office sort of the forerunner to the OMB but with more power so he he was a man with Nixon went to China and the budget Dawes did this he caught the budget you did the Dawes plan helping Germany we lend them money they pay their the Germans paid everyone else back what a statesman banking family Chicagoland family but he was a maverick he'd go his own way and what infuriated Coolidge was a Coolidge had some close confirmation hearings planned and Dawes used his inauguration we're in an ovulation time to get up and berate the Senators for their poor behavior and abuse of the filibuster essentially and he antagonized the Senate rather than following his orders from Calvin his president to appease make friends with grease the wheels for the nominations to come you tell story in here though about Calvin Coolidge having breakfast at the White House and a lot of members of the Senate and all calling in sick not wanting to come that's right it was well he wasn't a get along guy Harding was a get along guy right so Coolidge comes in he's a governor he sat presided over the Senate I don't think presiding over the Senate was fun to him when he had formerly presided over the Senate Senate of the state of Massachusetts where you can vote not just an Atty but you have more power as a head of the Senate of the state of Massachusetts in that body than you do as vice president president of our Senate here so he hadn't really liked the Senators Lodge made his life hell there when he was vice president and he but I I want to say I think it was his virtue that made them not want to come this story is Coolidge would host Vermont breakfasts and usher Ike Hoover not the president you sure would round up the people and I Coover didn't really like Coolidge Coolidge was not a good tipper and I kept a diary lo and behold everyone loves face time with the president we all go Democrat a Republican when a president summons right the senators didn't go so there's a roster of excuses sick senator Heflin sick Senator Reid wife sick or friends I can Wow and and and Ike Hoover maliciously kept a record of the negative RSVPs but what I see when I look at why these printed why these senators turn down the Vermont breakfasts with the maple syrup from Coolidge's properties they knew he wasn't going to give them anything imagine the incredible pressure prosperities been there for years the budget should grow why not why shouldn't grow all the farms need something oh let's nationalize Power Muscle Shoals was an abiding issue let's give the vets more one mendicant after the other and Coolidge was so unsatisfying if these breakfasts he always said no and after a while they turned his back on their back on him I I found these because I don't know they're in the book but I found out one to ask you about is that he was offered presidency of Amherst and he says it's easier to control of Congress than a college faculty well that makes sense there's a sub story there there was a wonderful also rogue president of Amherst whose friend Dwight Morrow would help put in Alexander Michael John and some viewers will know Michael John's name from Wisconsin where he went later and created this interesting experimental College is a great legacy there but Michael John was progressive in a way that the Amherst men weren't used to and he basically wasn't friendly to World War one and that was as divisive as the Iraq war has been lately it was a knife a scissors through society you were on one side to the other so the Amherst alums were on one side and Michael John was on the other he wasn't pious enough for the Amherst old guys and eventually they forced him out he didn't go easily and Coolidge was clearly on the side that forced him out and he wasn't happy with that because he could see Michael I mean they could all see Michael John was talented it was a hard call and they were all you know all of a sudden these nice men had negative articles about them in the New Republic when they'd fancied themselves fine fellows and they had thought what they were doing was for Amherst and Michael John spent quite a bit of money that one of the issues was he borrowed and overspent on his personal life in the job as Amherst president so this was a burr in their sides they were unpopular for ejecting this university president he didn't want to get involved in those politics rationally enough there was also a new had name just before he left office it is early age of 60 died and I read that he gave six hundred seven hundred thousand dollars to his wife grace as you know what he will to her I don't know what this is accurate or not but I got on the calculator and it shows it to be worth twelve million dollars today he wasn't poor what did he make it well one way he made it was it he had another career as a successful journalist can you Calvin Coolidge columnist and I like that about him too and we're hoping around that Coolidge wrote a column every day imagine how long five hundred words did you rely on him I did I have a book there's a wonderful book that was put together of the they're only a year he stopped after a year just like he decided not to run again in twenty eight he stopped he said that's enough I've done them but he a lot of papers took the column they made seventy five thousand dollars as US president he made more as a columnist it was an embarrassing amount of money because the domen imagine every website paid you a little that's what so he made I believe he made two hundred thousand alone from the column and in hard times that was a lot but it was honest work he wrote the column he was exceedingly popular is there time for one story about that we have very little time ago ahead well someone paid him to write ten columns for two thousand dollars each and okay he sends them in he gets the money and they published only six he summons the editor at issue and says just what the editor expects him to say I wrote ten and you published only six and what does the editor say in response but we paid you which is the standard answer and Coolidge said well maybe those columns weren't good enough here's a check for the columns you didn't print a thousand back what and then we asked why would he give back to money if the contract said twenty thousand dollars he was entitled to keep it yes he was and that was Coolidge's business lesson his philosophy lesson because he wanted to do business with the other party he wanted to be a good citizen very rare behavior now and we mind that all right with our remaining 30 seconds which one of your children will end up being the Amity slays of the 2025 calendar year writer the writer I'm going to say Helen Lipsky which one would be the teacher I'm gonna hold so very difficult questions I'm going to say I can't I can't there are they're all going to be very good this is dedicated to them for their own perseverance at Coolidge theme they all persevere and I'm very proud of them we really are out of time again is there anything new about Calvin Coolidge that you found it's in this book that he struggled with debt and found a solution as we do today and look for our own the picture on the cover is from where I don't know actually but I would say it looks to me beginning of the presidency in 1924 something like that maybe 19 anyway before it looks like before it's on I happy Thank You Amity slays author of Coolidge for a DVD copy of this program call one eight seven seven six six to seven seven to six for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program visit us at QA or QA programs are also available as c-span podcasts

Channel: C-SPAN

Views: 45,104

Keywords: qa021013, C-SPAN, Q&A, Bloomberg syndicated columnist, author Amity Shlaes, 30th President, Calvin Coolidge, Plymouth Notch, conservative, Great Depression, Roaring Twenties, cspan

Id: EVn8ytEq-vU

Length: 59min 25sec (3565 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2013