He was a lawyer who made his way to President defending immigrants. In office he was a champion of civil rights. Alex Johnson on the wonder of “Silent Cal” Calvin Coolidge

Exactly a century ago there was another Republican President in the White House. In direct contrast to the current incumbent, this leader of the free world was one who suggested that, “Four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still.”

Calvin Coolidge was the 30th POTUS, a lawyer from Massachusetts who often represented immigrants in court. “No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat,” he argued. His rise to the top of the political ladder was careful and gradual; notably not a garrulous chap – his well-earned nickname was Silent Cal – he was nevertheless known for his dry wit. Turning the first sod at a tree-planting ceremony with a special trowel, he was then asked to say a few words before the massed military bands struck up. “That,” he said after a pause, “is a good worm.”

History has not been especially kind in assessing Coolidge’s effectiveness in office, which was marked by a significantly laissez-faire approach. Yet at the time he was a very popular President indeed. Insisting on decent behaviour in office after numerous scandals under his Republican predecessor, Warren Harding, Coolidge presided over a period of economic prosperity, opposing child labour and granting citizenship to all Native Americans while also describing African Americans’ civil rights as “sacred”.

Though his was the decade of the Roaring Twenties and he was a friend of both F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Coolidge was certainly not a playboy. Asked why he attended so many dinner parties thrown by the great and the good of Washington, he answered: “Got to eat somewhere.”

He was a man known for his reticence. Rather than making rambling, hour-long State of the Union addresses and hosting marathon press briefings, Coolidge made sure his few well-chosen words counted for something. “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind,” he wrote in his Christmas Day message on December 25, 1927, which was published by newspapers across the country. “To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”

He was also very keen on animals and hosted a veritable menagerie of pets while resident in the White House. In addition to the usual cats and dogs, he had a donkey called Ebenezer and a racoon called Rebecca – who was sent to him to be consumed for a Thanksgiving dinner but was instead pardoned and allowed to wander around the property at will.

The two lion cubs given to him by the Mayor of Johannesburg he named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau, and the 600lb “pygmy” hippopotamus he was gifted by tyre magnate Harvey S Firestone was christened William Johnston Hippopotamus, or Bill for short. Coolidge regretfully donated his four-legged friends to the National Zoo after leaving office. (It is perhaps worth noting here that Donald Trump is the first president in history who has had no pets.)

The way Coolidge handled his accession to the top job reveals a lot about the man he was. When, in 1923, President Harding died very suddenly of a heart attack at three in the morning, Vice-President Coolidge was away from Washington, visiting family. Sworn in on the spot, rather than leap straight into the saddle, he went back to bed.

He also knew when to stop. He won the 1924 election with the slogan “Keep Cool with Coolidge”. But when it came to running again in 1928, he decided not to. It would have meant spending almost a decade in office, which was, “longer than any other man has had it – too long,” he remarked, adding that long presidencies led to unwelcome comparisons with kingship. He also said, “The chances of having wise and faithful service are increased by a change in the presidential office from time to time.” Later, in his 1929 autobiography, Coolidge astutely observed that, “When a man begins to feel he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.”

Instead, he enjoyed messing about on the river in his boat, and taking up roles such as the Honorary President of the America Foundation for the Blind. His far more bubbly wife Grace, a former teacher, became a keen campaigner for the rights and education of the country’s deaf community.

A fatal heart attack brought him to a final stop in 1933. Rather than build some grotesquely self-aggrandising mausoleum, Coolidge’s headstone lies unobtrusively in the graveyard of the Plymouth Notch village where he grew up. It’s no higher than most others nearby, and only an almost unnoticeable Presidential seal engraving indicates who lies below.

Alex Johnson’s latest book is The Philosophy of Sheds, published by the British Library

This article is from Idler #110.

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