Coolidge (31 page)

Governor James Goodrich of Indiana, another conservative, telegraphed that Coolidge’s was “a victory for Americanism.” Even the Boston shoemakers’ trade group and the Portuguese Civic League of East Boston sent their good wishes. “Thank god for Coolidge and the hard-headed people of Massachusetts,” exclaimed the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
. In New Jersey a man wanted to start a new American party, with Coolidge as presidential and Ole Hanson as vice presidential candidate. “Massachusetts has spoken,” intoned Lodge. “It is the verdict of the United States speaking through the people of Massachusetts.” Gompers and Lewis, intimidated, now began to push hard to end the coal strike. It was clear now that the following November might bring an end to eight years of Democratic rule. The
Boston Herald
that week printed a cartoon with the caption “The Pilot Who Weathered the Storm.” It featured Coolidge at the helm of a ship named
Law and Order
in storm water labeled “
ANARCHY
.”

Coolidge took advantage of the cover of victory to announce his controversial “Big List,” the new names for his slimmed-down government. The papers first noted how many of the old officials had been dropped—those on the old state board of labor, those on the civil service commission, the head of the immigration bureau, and the chairman of the highway commission. In their place, bound to infuriate, were fewer departments and new names to head them. Coolidge issued a carefully worded explanation for his choices. He was acting, he claimed, in the best reform tradition, selecting the old and young, the western and the Boston man, and “Catholics, Protestants and Hebrews impartially.”

Among the outraged was Baxter, one of the state politicians who had campaigned for Coolidge just days before. In the new lineup Baxter had received a position in the new Metropolitan District Commission paying $1,000, far less, perhaps, than he had expected. Baxter was especially furious that Coolidge had not appointed his law partners and other friends for whom Baxter had apparently sought help. Baxter refused the post that was offered to him and declared war on Coolidge: “We are living under a regime of a royal governor, and the right of petition is about destroyed in Massachusetts.” Baxter correctly noted the weakness in Coolidge’s habit of thinking things over alone under pressure or with just a few good friends: “He shut himself away from everybody except Winthrop Murray Crane and William Butler and he is as far away from the public as he was from the Boston police force at the time of the strike.” Baxter went on to mock the boom for Coolidge as simply ridiculous. Dividing party leaders that way was hardly good when Coolidge needed their support. Nor were professional Republicans like Baxter the only protesters. Women were an especially important group to politicians that year; the Nineteenth Amendment had not cleared all the states yet but was likely to in time for women to vote in the 1920 presidential election. Now women’s groups were protesting because their candidate for assistant commissioner of labor, Mabel Gillespie, had lost out, and Coolidge instead had appointed a woman who had sat on the minimum wage commission. Critics would later say that he had not risen on his own merit, but had ridden the Republican escalator; here he was, destroying that escalator and thereby jeopardizing the chances that it would carry him farther, to the Republican National Convention. But these allegations could not slow Coolidge now. Indeed, the state’s executive council, the body with which he had worked in those years as lieutenant governor, confirmed Coolidge’s contentious list within a week of its delivery, voting unanimously in support of the governor in all cases except one, that of the chairman of the Department of Public Utilities.

Indeed, what led the newspapers was not the list but the talk of a Coolidge on another list, the national Republican ticket. The country was eager for the presidential election now, in part because Wilson’s illness had already plunged the country into an interregnum. Vice President Thomas Marshall remained in limbo. Weeks of not knowing about Wilson’s health were tiring the vice president. On November 23, Marshall was giving a speech in Atlanta at the Auditorium to the Order of the Moose when someone passed him a message that Wilson had died. Marshall conveyed the sad report to a crowd of a thousand, which broke into tumult; someone went to the organ and started to play “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” But the news of Wilson’s death was a hoax.

Toward the end of November, the Republican Club of Massachusetts formally launched Coolidge as its presidential candidate.
Collier’s
published Barton’s profile, a lengthy and adulatory portrait of Coolidge as a New England character. Coolidge spoke “plain words,” Barton wrote. Coolidge to him seemed “cut from granite,” an exaggeration that overlooked the slight softening in Coolidge’s face that William Allen White had observed. Other Americans were joiners, but not Coolidge. “At any rate, he belongs to nothing,” Barton concluded, making Coolidge sound not eccentric but independent. Barton told the old story from Coolidge’s Amherst days that in student surveys during senior year, others had favored Dwight Morrow, the golden boy of the class of 1895, but Morrow himself had favored Coolidge.

Barton sketched the place in U.S. politics where Coolidge belonged. “The great majority of Americans,” continued Barton, “are neither radicals nor reactionaries. They are middle-of-the-road folks who own their own homes and work hard and would like to have the government get back to its old habits of meddling with their lives as little as possible.” Then Barton introduced a phrase that he hoped might resonate: “silent majority.” Wrote Barton, “It sometimes seems as if this great silent majority had no spokesman. But Coolidge belongs with that crowd, he lives like them, he works like them, and understands.” Coolidge acknowledged the help in such ventures that all the press drummed up by his friends had supplied. When he read the
Collier’s
article, which appeared on November 22, gratitude overwhelmed Coolidge. He fancied himself a writer, but Barton’s skill in this area surpassed that of others. “You were able to do so much more than I had any idea was possible.”

In Washington, Wilson continued to fare poorly. Mid-November brought a blow that slammed the already ailing president. After fifty-five days of debate, the Senate refused to ratify his Treaty of Versailles, the first treaty in the history of the Senate to have been voted down. The presidential candidates were already pushing forward. Warren Harding of Ohio, a U.S. senator as loquacious as Coolidge was quiet, had jumped into the race. Harding had his own way of talking long-windedly, using a funny verb to describe his own circumlocutions: he bloviated, he said. Many found Harding vague. William Gibbs McAdoo, who hoped to succeed his father-in-law, Wilson, described Harding’s speeches as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.” General Leonard Wood was also pressing his candidacy; voters who wanted a return of Roosevelt wanted Wood, and their number put Wood in the lead. The doctor warrior was second only to General Pershing in fame; ever since Wilson had overlooked Wood in choosing a commander in Europe, the Roosevelt loyalists had been looking for revenge. On the national scene, others were rising. Herbert Hoover moved from strength to strength;
The New Republic
praised him.

But if Massachusetts acted in time, it might get in a name of its own. Triumphant over his treaty victory, Lodge returned to Massachusetts, and met with Coolidge for lunch at the Union Club. For years there had been so many other Coolidges in Lodge’s world. They were his aide Louis Coolidge, the historian and journalist who had served him for years in the Senate; William Coolidge, the railroad lawyer and Louis’s brother; and Archibald Cary Coolidge, the director of the Harvard University Library. Now, finally, Lodge was recognizing Calvin Coolidge, and told the governor that he would offer Coolidge’s name at the Republican Convention as a presidential candidate. As Lodge, seventy, explained to Coolidge, who would turn forty-eight the next summer, “I am far too old. A man who takes the Presidency should be at least ten years younger than I am and it would be better if he were twenty years younger.” This friendly arithmetic was the benediction Stearns and the other Amherst men had been waiting for. Stearns circulated
Have Faith in Massachusetts
all over the country and made his long-awaited trip to Washington to publicize his candidate. The merchant proudly confirmed to the press that Massachusetts would deliver a pledged delegation for Coolidge at the party convention, with Lodge and Crane there as delegates at large to back Coolidge.

Thanksgiving found Coolidge finally back home on Massasoit Street, thinking again of his family. That autumn John sent Coolidge’s sons gifts of $1 each, but it was hard to know what to send back to Carrie, who was herself faring worse. Still, Calvin and Grace finally allowed themselves some celebration. Their son John was good at mechanics. Coolidge took particular joy in the enterprise of his son Calvin. The son told his father that he was saving money for a bike and getting up at 5:45
A.M.
to “peddle papers.” Everything seemed possible in the coming year, and worth aiming for. In South Dakota, a state Republican convention was the first to endorse a national ticket, and it named him second after General Wood as vice presidential candidate. Coolidge wrote back that he would not consider the vice presidential slot. At the State House in Boston, Governor Clement, who was visiting, promised Coolidge that Vermont was behind him all the way.

It was tradition in the commonwealth that the governor proclaim Thanksgiving each autumn. Penning his proclamation that November at the executive chamber, Coolidge made an effort to remind them all that the difficult twelve months behind Massachusetts and the country had also enjoyed some blessings. “The people have had a year of peace,” he had written simply. “Law and order” might provide the basis for a splendid new era. The headline that
The Boston Globe
put on the Thanksgiving address summed up not only the outlook for the state, but also Coolidge’s own: “For present attainment, for future hope.”

Eight
: Normalcy

Boston and Washington

ONE DAY IN JANUARY
1920, reporters gathered on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., for the opening of the Coolidge for President office. Six rooms on the parlor floor of the Raleigh Hotel were given over to stenographers and clerks who shipped out to the nation copies of
Have Faith in Massachusetts
, which Stearns and Houghton Mifflin had upgraded with a preface by Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University. Stearns could congratulate himself. The man who had agreed to head the Coolidge campaign, James B. Reynolds, could not have been more qualified. Reynolds had overseen tariff collection at the Treasury under Theodore Roosevelt and had, until just that month, served as secretary to the Republican National Committee.

Frederick Gillett, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives had also signed up to back Coolidge, providing an alluring aura of Capitol Hill authority. Gillett represented Westfield, the town where Coolidge had spoken about the importance of law, on Labor Day four months before. This wasn’t all: Coolidge for President had already established an outpost, an office in Chicago, led by a woman, Jean Bennett. Mrs. Bennett would make Coolidge’s presence felt in the city the Republicans had just chosen as their convention site. Her hiring also signaled the campaign’s appreciation of the new group of voters, Coolidge for President was seeking pledges from delegates to the convention. Stearns and Reynolds—Stearns beaming, Reynolds exuding the appropriate political cunning—both gave interviews to the
Globe
.

Two actors, though, were missing from the warm scene at the Raleigh. The first was Henry Cabot Lodge, who ranked higher than Gillett. No Massachusetts candidacy could be serious without the benediction of the Senate leader. The second missing man was the candidate himself, Coolidge.

Indeed, it was only a matter of days before Coolidge brought down the curtain on the Washington campaigners’ show. “I have not been and I am not a candidate for President,” the press reported the governor as saying. And within a week the Washington office found itself ruefully shutting down, though, as a
Globe
columnist reported, “it took some time to convince Mr. Stearns that an open campaign in behalf of Governor Coolidge should be abandoned.”

It seemed perverse to stamp on the brakes just as the enterprise gathered momentum, but Coolidge did stamp. He feared first of all that he might be entering the campaign too early. As much renown as he had garnered for his reelection and handling of the strike, he was not an established national candidate. Therefore his best shot at the nomination would be at the convention itself, if a deadlock among established figures such as General Wood provided a sudden opening. Money was a second reason to slow down. The progressives were scrutinizing all the campaigns for heavy spending. If Coolidge for President shut down now, and Coolidge entered the race in June, he would receive far fewer donations than General Wood, upon whose head frustrated fans of Theodore Roosevelt were pouring cash. The third reason for the sudden halt was the most important: Coolidge was not sure what he believed, and not sure that the party knew what it believed either.

The old Massachusetts mottoes of unity, tariffs, and progressivism had sufficed during the war. But they would not necessarily do so in peacetime. The League of Nations, Lodge’s great whipping boy, had evoked strong passions in voters last year, but that did not mean it could elect a president this year. “Law and order,” or “the reign of law,” as Coolidge sometimes referred to it, certainly represented a good addition to the program. Public opinion was now so solidly behind the authorities on matters like strikes that it was hard to remember what life had been like last summer. The old policemen of Boston had long since withdrawn. In February, John McInnes resigned from the police union, declaring his union “well and truly beaten” and saying he lacked the time to give to his “regular trade of bricklaying.” Across the nation, the strikers from the coal mines and the steel mills were finally giving up too. Still, law and order couldn’t be the only new plan the party offered. Around Christmas, the U.S. attorney general had deported the most notorious radicals to Russia in a ship, the
Buford
; the photos and drawings of the ship had shocked many Americans. Deportion seemed a nasty, fearful act, unworthy of the United States.