Posted on 06/30/2015 10:09:12 AM PDT by newgeezer
Americans love the 4th of July—and for good reason. Writing to his wife in July 1776, John Adams hailed the Fourth as “the day of deliverance” and predicted that it would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.” He correctly foresaw these annual celebrations “with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” On the first anniversary in 1777, the celebrations started, and they have continued ever since.
The year 2015 will be no exception. But as Americans turn their thoughts this year to the blessings of Independence Day, we should add one additional—less well known—blessing to the list. In addition to Independence Day, July 4th is also the birthday of one of our great presidents, the 30th President, Calvin Coolidge.
On July 4, 1872, Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch, a small village in rural Vermont. It was here that he learned the New England puritan virtues that would define his character. Coolidge spoke often of his father’s hard work and his “strong New England trait of great repugnance at seeing anything wasted.” He came to view any kind of waste as “a moral wrong.” Another New England characteristic that young Coolidge absorbed was a total lack of pretense—and a strong aversion to anything, or anyone, pretentious. In his words, “Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth.” Hard work, independent thinking, lack of pretense, sense of duty, perseverance, and scrupulous truthfulness all constituted the essence of Coolidge’s boyhood life in Plymouth Notch and became the trademarks of Coolidge the adult.
After graduating from Amherst College, Coolidge married, settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, and began what became a steady ascent in political life. First, he was elected to a series of local offices, followed by election to the state legislature, Lt. Governor, and finally Governor of Massachusetts. In 1919, as Governor, Coolidge’s successful settlement of the Boston Police Strike catapulted him into national prominence. With these famous words, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anytime, anywhere,” Coolidge was suddenly famous. As a result, the Republican convention nominated him for Vice-President, as Warren Harding’s running mate.
When President Harding died unexpectedly in 1923, the picture of Calvin Coolidge taking the oath of office became indelibly stamped on the country’s collective consciousness. Coolidge was vacationing at his father’s farm in Plymouth Notch when word of Harding’s death came late in the night. He took the oath of office from his father, Colonel John Coolidge, a notary, in the small family living room by the light of a kerosene lamp. It is impossible to imagine a more appropriate backdrop for Coolidge’s rise to the presidency. He was the product of rural America—a man without pretense—straightforward, frugal, and honest. This was Americans’ first glimpse of their new president—and they liked what they saw.
The country soon discovered that Coolidge was totally unlike any national politician it had encountered. He seemed consistently to eschew the conventional political necessities of warmth and congeniality; and even more surprisingly, he was truly a man of few words. He was at once both, in William Allen White’s words, a “throwback to the more primitive days of the Republic” and also a highly successful modern politician, who was the first president to use radio, photography, and public relations adroitly. It was remarkable that this physically unimpressive, undramatic, reticent New Englander could have so dominated his era, elicited the affection of the public, and modeled the virtues that gave it substance. For an America that was experiencing postwar disillusionment and a bewildering modern secularism, Coolidge offered faith in a mythic America of honesty, hard work, thrift, and religion. As White concluded, Coolidge was in fact a genius, but this genius was surprisingly—fascinatingly unconventional in every way.
Coolidge proved, in historian Paul Johnson’s words, to be “the most internally consistent and single-minded of presidents.” He oversaw a program of comprehensive tax reform, the reduction of the top marginal income tax rate from 70% to 24%, the removal of most Americans from the income tax rolls completely, the longest period of peacetime expansion and prosperity in U. S. history, and, astoundingly, an absolute reduction in the size of the federal bureaucracy. He was arguably America’s most successful conservative president.
On July 4, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge traveled to Philadelphia to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He closed with these words: “The Declaration of Independence is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created them.”
We would do well to remember Coolidge’s words this Independence Day.
Who knows who he chose...
Don’t sell O’Connor short...she helped Bush in Bush v Gore
interesting. Thanks for the info. That is a knock against Coolidge then.
Still though, Reagan cannot be given a pass for Kennedy. Yes, Reagan was weakened after 1986, but he was warned about Kennedy and went ahead anyway.
And the O’Connor selection was a true waste. With control of the Senate, he could have gotten two Scalia-like judges confirmed before the Kennedy mistake. Why did Reagan make a campaign promise - to put the first woman on the Sup Court - that would only appeal to people who would never vote for him anyway?
With GOP control of the Senate, Reagan could have gotten two Scalia-quality judges confirmed. He could have made his diversity pick later.
O’Connor is what happens when a Republican makes a puzzling campaign promise to make a diversity-based Sup Court pick. Why did he do that? Why make a promise seemingly designed to appeal to people (leftists) who were never going to vote for him?
Like Kennedy, O’Connor got some things right. But she was also part of the majority that saved Roe and that sanctioned the use of racial preferences. She also developed an insufferably smug attitude about judges and criticism of them.
And while it was correct to stop the Florida Sup Court from trying to allow Gore to streal the election, in hindsight perhaps a Gore win wouldn’t have been so bad...if he had been a one-term President. All else being equal, there wouldn’t have been any Sup Court vacancies until after 2004, and maybe a more competent Republican than Bush would have defeated Gore in 2004, and maybe that competency could have avoided the disastrous final part of Bush’s presidency that helped elect Obama. That may be too much to wonder about I know. The media would have tried to blame any Republican for Katrina, and the economic collapse had been set in motion years earlier by the diversity-worshiping zeal of both parties to increase minority home ownership, credit standards be damned.
I never understood why Reagan was so adamant about explicitly appointing O’Connor (I believe he expressed in his own diary such feelings about doing so, despite being counseled that it was a bad choice). Surely there was another female Conservative sitting on the bench (or in another elective office) that could’ve done far better.
Reagan sometimes made some really odd choices that ultimately backfired (for one, he should never have chosen Bush as his running mate when he should’ve chosen Paul Laxalt. He had similarly harmed himself in 1976 when he picked liberal PA Sen. Dick Schweiker to be his running mate, which may have been enough to narrowly cost him the nomination over Ford).
Had Jus. Lewis Powell retired a year earlier, we might’ve gotten a better pick. As you’ll remember, the Democrats got the Senate back in 1987. That allowed them to do their number on Robert Bork (had Bork gotten the votes of all the Republicans, he still would’ve lost — had it been a year earlier, he might’ve gotten on the court — though the downside is that he’d have died while Zero was in office allowing his replacement).
Douglas Ginsburg would’ve done well on the court and might’ve gotten through (might), but the marijuana thing did him in (oddly it didn’t come out a year earlier when he was confirmed to the DC Court of Appeals). After 2 trials with those, Reagan was probably weary and went with a “safe” Ford judicial appointee. Ultimately, he might’ve had a difficult time with getting another Scalia or Rehnquist on the court, and after their ‘86 victory, the Dems were hell-bent on stopping another Conservative judicial appointment. I still remember how ugly it was with elevating Rehnquist, where the media/Dems accused him or implied he physically blocked Black people from voting in Arizona, a scurrilous lie.
Bush was a bad choice for VP, but certainly not an odd one.
Schweiker, that was odd. Damn odd.
As was his *ardon for O’Connor, I suppose.
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