Calvin Coolidge: The Silent President

this video is brought to you by squarespace  whether it's your new profession or just a   lifelong passion start your journey to website  glory with squarespace check out their amazing   all-in-one platform through the link in  the description below more on them in a bit go looking through us presidents from  the first half of the 20th century and   you'll find a surplus of icons teddy roosevelt  woodrow wilson fdr and harry truman are still   famous for being among america's greatest leaders  while warren g harding and herbert hoover are   famous for being the exact opposite heck even  william mckinley and william howard taft remain   known one for being assassinated the other for  being so fat he was practically a walking your   mum joke yet the most fascinating president  of this era is also likely the one most of us   have never heard of calvin coolidge rarely makes  lists of best or worst commanders in chief outside   political history geek circles his five years and  seven months in office are barely remembered yet   they constituted one of the most quietly radical  eras that washington has ever seen as president of   the 1920s coolidge oversaw a roaring economy even  as he trimmed government spending to the bone when   he left office it was as a conservative hero a  man who'd brought prosperity so why isn't silent   cow better remembered today the answer lies  in a tale of excess prosperity and heartbreak in terms of over-the-top symbolism it's hard  to beat a future president of the united states   being born on independence day but that's exactly  what john calvin coolidge did entering the world   on july the 4th 1872 like a living metaphor  yet this well-timed entrance would turn out   to be a rare flash of bombast in the quiet  life of the 30th president and we don't mean   quiet in the sense of boring we mean he literally  barely ever spoke growing up in picturesque but   hard scrabble plymouth vermont young calvin  absorbed the family trait of speaking only when   absolutely necessary even the boy's father who was  a merchant into legislature and thus expected to   occasionally talk to people treated words like  expensive chocolates dosing them out in small   doses and only on special occasions compared to  his son though the man was practically locatious   calvin coolidge grew up so silent it was a local  joke that he was mute for the boy muttering a   greeting was a conversation while exchanging two  sentences was like launching into a soliloquy   while that quietness was in his nature though the  boy also relished the opportunity that it gave him   to observe as most kids his age were playing  or studying coolidge seemed to be absorbing   life lessons storing them away in a special safe  deep within his soul he noted for example the way   debt crushed family friends a fatey swore he'd  never endure he noticed too the way his father's   economical use of speech wasn't a hindrance at  town meetings but almost a superpower a way to   ensure no one could ever throw ill-advised words  back in his face much later coolidge would remark   of his own taciturn nature the things i don't  say never get me into trouble yet there were also   times when perhaps more should have been said when  coolidge turned 12 his mother died of tuberculosis   sent in to see her one last time he was merely  told by his father not to cry in the aftermath   of her death there was mourning but no grieving  the two men simply never spoke about it much as   they would keep silent when coolidge's sister died  it's back to these twin tragedies that some today   trace coolidge's temperament irritable  melancholic and difficult to be around   but you could also just as easily trace back to  them his drive to succeed years earlier coolidge's   grandfather had left the boy 40 acres on the  understanding that he continued to work the hard   vermont soil like his family always had instead  following his sister's death the boy suddenly left   plymouth traveled to amherst to get an education  there coolidge was unwanted by the fraternities   forced to live instead in boarding houses this  turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it   allowed him to gradually level up his social  skills he didn't really do small talk but at   least every sentence no longer felt like a double  colonoscopy where he did start to excel though   was in making speeches it sounds counterintuitive  i mean a guy for whom hello was one word too many   was happy to get up before an auditorium and  wow them for 40 minutes yet it seems coolidge's   natural reticent simply melted away in these  formal settings in the sheltered world of college   he was free to discover his hidden talents he was  also free to discover his political beliefs one of   coolidge's tutors at amherst was professor charles  garman a guy who regularly turned his lectures   into pians on individual liberty property rights  and conservatism under his spell coolidge began to   identify more and more as a republican by the time  he graduated it was no longer enough to return to   plymouth and get into farming no the young man now  had another destiny one it might be even harder to   reap rewards from than the cold northeastern  soil coolidge was going to get into politics   normally when we do videos on presidents who  came up through party politics like lyndon   johnson or richard nixon there's a section where  their career takes off like a rocket ship calvin   coolidge's rise by contrast was like watching a  snail climb up a stepladder rather than the name   straight for the house or senate coolidge instead  set his sights on the city council in northampton   massachusetts where he moved after graduation only  five years later did he bolster this with a run   for the school committee a race that he lost but  rather than shrug his shoulders and move on silent   cow went back he analyzed what had gone wrong he  tried to figure out how he could have turned the   loss into a win when he next stood for election  he'd used that knowledge to secure his victory   for the rest of his career coolidge never lost  a single race and so silent cal began his slow   but unstoppable rise through the massachusetts  gop he became a member of the state house of   representatives then mayor of northampton then  a state senator and then a lieutenant governor   as he rose he began to develop his politicals  in 1912 coolidge mediated a textile strike in   lawrence and came away convinced a pro-business  anti-strike position was the only one to take   that same year he threw his lot in with william  howard taft's re-election bid divorcing himself   from the republican progressive wing personified  by teddy roosevelt more important though may have   been coolidge's time in the state senate there  he realized the work of government shouldn't be   passing endless laws but actively revoking bad  ones that the state passed fewer bills while he   was said at presidents was long a source of pride  for him still we don't want to give the impression   that coolidge's life was nothing but politics  there was also time for romance for a man as dao   as coolidge loved to be the story of how he met  grace goodhue is unexpectedly sweet a teacher at   northampton school for the deaf silent cow one day  heard her laughing through an open window and was   so enamored by the sound that he resolved then and  there to date her they married in 1905 leading to   the snarky joke that grace taught the deaf to hear  now she might be able to teach the mute to speak   by the time the wilson presidency got underway  coolidge was a happily married father of two with   a solid career as a conservative lawmaker who  was independent enough to track left on stuff   like women's rights and immigration in the 1918  race for massachusetts governor this combination   was enough to land him the job he was sworn in  the following january just in time for the crisis   that would make his name the boston police strike  was a mass walkout over the right to form a union   suddenly without cops the city plunged into  chaos and looting but rather than do as everyone   expected and cut a deal coolidge went on the  attack ordering the state guard into boston to   restore order coolidge fired all the striking  officers declaring there is no right to strike   against the public safety by anybody anywhere  anytime it was such a forceful reaction that his   friends begged him not to sign the order saying  it would end his career instead it turned coolidge   into a national hero the lawlessness in boston  had horrified the nation people saw the police   officers not as regular strikers but as deserters  who surrendered the city so when coolidge crushed   the strike america applauded even woodrow wilson  came out in support of him from a solid but   unremarkable governor calvid coolidge had  suddenly become the hottest property in politics   just as the election year of 1920 dawned  not that his party was currently looking   for anyone popular or principled to lead it  the 1920 republican convention saw the affably   corrupt infinitely clubbable warren g harding  handed the nomination in a shady backroom deal   angered by these shenanigans the rank and file  delegates rebelled forcing one of their own   picks onto the party ticket as vp coolidge was  in the governor's mansion in boston when he got   the call that a voter insurgency had landed him  the vice presidential nomination his wife grace   asked if he was going to accept i suppose i  shall have to he replied with characteristic   understatement and just like that coolidge's  path to the presidency was set now if you want   your path to a great website to be said you've  got to visit our longtime sponsor squarespace   this is the age of creation people are making new  things on the internet all the time you probably   know someone or maybe you yourself want to start  something online and when it's time to move 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member only areas analytics commercial options 24  7 customer support everything you could ever want   in one place so when you're ready to get started  on the next project of yours big or small it   involves a website it's gotta be with squarespace  right now you can go to squarespace.com for a free   trial and when you're ready to launch your site  go to squarespace.com forward slash biographics   to save ten percent of your first purchase of a  website or a domain and let's go back to quark cal come the 1920 election the question wasn't if the  republicans would win but just how much of a blah   victory was on the cards after eight years of  wilson's progressive agenda after a war that had   killed 116 000 americans after a deadly pandemic  and amid a deep procession people were simply   ready for change warren harding capitalized  on this running with coolidge under the slogan   a return to normalcy without ever telling anyone  what exactly that meant not that this ambiguity   mattered that november harding and coolidge  demolished their democratic opponents james   m cox and his vp pick franklin d roosevelt thus  making coolidge the only person to ever defeat fdr   in a national election it was a landslide win a  sign the electorate was ready for real republican   leadership unfortunately what they got was harding  and his dodgy mates sucking the nation dry as you   might remember from our video on him ron harding  and his ohio gang were of the go big or go home   school of corruption in his three years on  the job they did everything from sell off the   navy's oil reserves to their friends to steal  life-saving medicine from veterans hospitals   luckily for coolidge though they never once cut  their vp in on the action as far as the white   house was concerned silent cal was a boring sap  they'd got lumbered with the lame millhouse to   harding's devilish bart so they basically ghosted  him gouledge had little contact with harding's   team even in congress coolidge's role as senate  president was sidelined by gop majority leader   and harding powell henry cabo lodge it was a  time of immense frustration for coolidge but it   would also save his career by 1923 corruption  under harding had gotten so extreme ranging   from extortion to unleashing the doj on political  enemies the senate had started taking note before   the scandals could break though harding went and  died of a suspected stroke on hearing the news   it said that henry cabot lodge turned pale and  cried in disbelief my god that means coolidge is   president as indeed he was the day harding went  off to the great pig trough in the sky coolidge   was vacationing with his family back in plymouth  far away from any telephone line by the time the   messenger reached the house the vice president  was asleep he was woken in the night by his father   now a justice of the peace and told to get ready  coolidge got out of bed prayed and went downstairs   in the early hours of august 3 1923 silent cal  stood under a kerosene lamp in a darkened room in   his childhood home while his father administered  the oath of office at 2 24 am coolidge officially   became the 30th president of the united states  the drama over he went straight back to bed as   if nothing had changed but of course it had  dimly aware of the brewing scandals coolidge   became president just as revelations of harding's  misconduct exploded just as during the police   strike the new president responded ruthlessly  harding's crimes were open to investigation while   his old ohio gang were purged from government  although coolidge tried carefully at first   afraid of uncovering too much corruption in his  party ahead of the 1924 election all of the 29th   president's lackeys had soon been cold-bloodedly  dispatched from washington amid the booming   economy of the 1920s this show of force was enough  for voters rather than punish coolidge for his   proximity to harding they instead rewarded him in  november 1924 coolidge carried over 54 percent of   the vote securing himself a full term the era of  clearing up harding's mess was over from now on   coolidge would be his own president while his term  would never be as dramatic as hardings it would   still manage to radically reshape everything  washington thought it knew about government the arrival of a monosyllabilic president was a  field day for american satirists h.r mentioned   famously declared that president coolidge's  ideal day was quote would be one in which nothing   happens but while this was meant in jest it does  get to an essential truth not that silent cow   wanted nothing to ever happen but that he wanted  the federal government to do as little as possible   conservative to his core coolidge believed that  businesses should be left to themselves that the   states should take care of their own affairs and  that washington should aim for blissful inaction   combine this with his penchant for taking  long afternoon naps and the 30th president   got a reputation as a man with all the spirit of a  recently deceased dodo yet coolidge wasn't lazy he   really believed america could basically run itself  once saying if the federal government were to go   out of business the common run of people would not  detect the difference the only time he got really   animated was where money was concerned throughout  his tenure coolidge obsessively cut government   spending even dictating what color bags the  postal service used in order to save a few pennies   he became one of the few modern presidents to  run a budget surplus something he called among   the noblest monuments of virtue but it wasn't just  spending coolidge slashed taxes also got the knife   with the top rate plummeting to 25 percent still  the lowest on record since world war one among   the not rich majority of the population federal  taxes dropped to effectively nothing and all this   cutting and light touch regulation really seemed  to work the coolidge prosperity is basically what   we think of when we think of the roaring twenties  growth was strong wages soared unemployment fell   and money was everywhere it sounds great and for  most people living through it it probably was   yet but be lying if we said there wasn't a  dark side to the coolidge prosperity the 30th   president was so committed to small government for  example that it sometimes eclipsed his humanity in   1927 catastrophic flooding along the mississippi  river inundated an area the size of the republic   of ireland two hundred thousand people were  displaced and whole communities were ruined yet   coolidge was adamant the affected towns should pay  for the damage themselves it took the secretary   of commerce herbertova to convince him to  begrudgingly launch a federal relief effort   similarly a federal anti-lynching bill that  had been championed by harding was quietly   dropped by silent cal who felt the groundbreaking  legislation would have infringed on states rights   but the darkest side of all involved the thing  coolidge loved the most business as the second   half of the 20s roared into view wall street was  doing a worse and worse job of regulating itself   speculation was out of control elsewhere the  agricultural sector was in dire need of help   yet coolidge never intervened and well we all  know where that ended still hindsight is 20 20.   it's worth noting that no one in coolidge's time  saw the wall street crash coming no they were   too busy enjoying their great gatsby star parties  and moving jerkily to the distant strains of jazz   broadly then life was good in the coolidge years  so good that everyone expected him to run for a   second term in 1928 and to win but there was one  person who wasn't enjoying the coolidge prosperity   despite being at the very heart of it as his  term wore on the 30th president began to spend   more and more time sleeping long epic slumbers  that soon left him with as little as a four-hour   workday in his era coolidge's hypersomnia was a  not-so-secret joke a strange quirk of a strange   president but in the last couple of decades a  new theory has emerged one that could explain   a lot about is one term what if calvin coolidge  wasn't just some quiet dude who liked naps but   someone in the grips of a depression so  deep he could no longer see a way out in summer 1924 less than a year after his  dad's unexpected elevation to the presidency   sixteen-year-old calvin coolidge jr stepped onto  a white house tennis court for an impromptu game   it was a regular day nothing special if he had  watched calvin jr and his older brother play their   set she wouldn't have thought anything about it  but after a few games it was clear that something   wasn't right in his rush to get on court calvin jr  hadn't bothered to put on socks now a blister had   formed on his foot causing him to cool off the  game that boring unremarkable afternoon nobody   thought much of it it was just an interrupted  tennis match there would be plenty more in the   future it was only when disaster struck that  people would think back to that game to that   afternoon and see the roots of the tragedy that  would soon consume the white house within days the   blister on calvin junior's foot to become infected  in these years before penicillin there was nothing   the family could do nothing but watch helplessly  as the infection became blood poisoning calvin   coolidge jr died on july 7 1924 a little over 11  months into his father's first partial term as his   son slipped away silent cal sat at his bedside  a locket clutched in one hand in the locket was   a picture of his own mother who died all those  years ago and a lock of her hair he pressed it   into his boy's palm until the boy could hold it  no more his cabin jr died the locket fell from his   fingers the death of the family's golden boy hit  the coolidge is hard both the 30th president and   his wife grace were plunged into a deep depression  as coolidge later said of the day his son died   the power and the glory of the presidency went  with him among presidents only a handful have   lost their children while serving in office most  famously abraham lincoln but there's good reason   to believe coolidge suffered more than any of them  having never properly grieved his mother or his   sister the death of calvin jr seems to have simply  broken him it was in the aftermath the coolidge   began sleeping as much as possible drifting away  from life from the pain of his memories for up   to 16 hours at a time he showed nearly all the  signs of major depression from an inability to   take joy in things to viciously blaming himself  for everything that had gone wrong some days he   seems to have done little more than to put  his head on his desk close his eyes and weep   now we don't want to overdo this during his full  term coolidge was hardly bedridden with grief he   worked to cut taxes liaised with his cabinet held  regular press conferences he was even capable of   dry wit such as when he responded to a woman  who said she'd made a bet that she could make   him say more than three words at dinner with you  lose in short he was functioning but functioning   isn't the tame as actually living somewhere  deep beneath that cold mysterious exterior   a tiny spark seemed to have gone out in its  place came nothing but a weariness so vast   that it eclipsed everything the loss of calvin jr  affected grace just as badly in 1927 she appears   to have had an affair possibly with someone  connected to the white house there's evidence   that coolidge found out and so we come to the  final act of coolidge's presidency in the summer   of 1927 silent cal passed a note to reporters  who'd come to document his family vacation   it simply read i do not choose to run  for president in 1928. at the time the   announcement caused shockwaves to this very day  what caused coolidge to pull out is still hotly   debated but whatever the rational reason it seems  doubtful that the image of calvin junior slipping   away wasn't somewhere in the back of his mind  haunting him as he would for the rest of his life at the time coolidge handed the baton over to  his former secretary of commerce herbertova   he had every reason to think history would smile  kindly on him he'd overseen a prolonged economic   boom that lifted americans out of poverty he'd  pushed the international kellogg bryant pact   committing nations to avoiding war it forged a  new less aggressive policy towards latin america   it kept the us out of the league of nations he  achieved a balanced budget in fact coolidge in   1928 was so popular that republicans tried to  get his name on the party ticket refusal to run   be damned silent cal had to practically beg them  to instead nominate hoover not that the gop needed   to have worried who was elected in a landslide in  a large part by playing off of coolidge's legacy   so yeah it seems fair to say that as coolidge  left washington in march of 1929 that he felt   sure of being remembered but of course that's not  what happened that october the collapse of the   financial system and subsequent great depression  killed the 30th president's reputation people   charged that he'd seen the collapse coming when  he decided not to run for re-election that his   policies had single-handedly created the economic  catastrophe with nearly a century of hindsight we   can see these charges weren't true there were  so many intertwining causes of the depression   that it's doubtful anyone could have averted it  still coolidge could have done more and the public   seemed to recognize this just like harding years  earlier coolidge's post-presidency reputation   was soon utterly trashed tragically he wouldn't  live long enough to see his rehabilitation   calvin killage died of a heart attack on january  5 1933 as america stood on the cusp between two   eras behind lay the wreckage of the roaring  twenties and the prosperity coolidge had been   so proud of ahead lay the uncharted waters of the  new deal of fdr an era that had no place for men   like silent cow today calvin coolidge  is arguably the least remembered 20th   century president washington has no significant  memorial to him there is no presidential library   even the coolidge auditorium in the library of  congress is named for a patron who just happened   to share his last name in scholarly rankings  too coolidge remains obscure often appearing   right in the middle of the pack he's surrounded  by other non-entities like grover cleveland and   james a garfield and yet despite his near  invisibility silentcal has still managed to   have an outsized influence on the modern world 51  years after coolidge left the white house another   president came in with similar thoughts  on government known as ronald reagan one   of his first acts was to hang a portrait  of coolidge in the cabinet office to help   inspire his own conservative program it's a sweet  irony of history isn't it perhaps the most obscure   20th century president inspiring one of the most  iconic but then that's calvin coolidge a man   who could sometimes be small sometimes  great sometimes playful sometimes depressed   but what he and his presidency never  were was anything less than fascinating so i really hope you found this video  interesting if you did please do hit   that thumbs up button below don't forget to  subscribe and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 442,132

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: EzMqH5fUtko

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021