"Silent Cal" Pipes Up With The 4-Ever Republican Platform

The first presidential film with sound recording, 1924. John McCain may as well give the same speech.



Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, presided over the soaring stock market and great boom years of the Roaring Twenties (1923–1929), and in so doing became quite popular, despite being so notoriously taciturn. When this former Massachusetts governor died in 1933, Dorothy Parker reportedly quipped, "How could they tell?"

"His ideal day is one on which nothing whatever happens.... Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored."
-- H.L. Mencken

"Coolidge's terseness became legendary. He could be 'silent in five languages,' a contemporary asserted. A favorite joke had a pretty young woman approaching the president to explain that she had bet a friend she could make him say more than two words. 'You lose,' Coolidge replied. Alice Roosevelt Longworth said he looked as though he'd been 'weaned on a pickle.'"
-- H.W. Brands

"Coolidge's philosophy is Puritanism de luxe, in which it is possible to praise all the classic virtues while continuing to enjoy all the modern conveniences."
-- Walter Lippman

"The business of America is business."
-- Coolidge

"If you keep dead still, they will run down in three or four minutes. If you even cough or smile they will start up all over again."
-- Coolidge to his successor, Herbert Hoover, on how to deal with visitors to the White House

Taxes, taxes, taxes... Yeah, sure. We all just love paying taxes, don't we? Forget your culture wars, people. Cal was telling you what the Republican Party was about, is about, and will always be about. They still stick to the same old songsheets, even though that stock market bubble collapsed shortly after Cal left office, and the country was plunged into the Great Depression. You'd think that would have been enough to discredit those laissez faire ideas forever, but apparently not. Brush that speech off, and Romney could have slickly packaged it a few months ago, or McCain could stumble through it just as clumsily today.

Yes, they've stuck to their principles. Give them credit for that... I wish the Democratic Party had stuck to theirs.

Someone clever has read between the lines of that speech, btw, and distilled the rest of the GOP platform issues, again, prescient in their relevance for today, like so...



What is that he's reading from? William's chapbook?

For all that Cal said in what he did not say, or for what little he actually said with great reluctance, his greatest bit of folk wisdom might have been what's come to be known as the Coolidge Effect.



The story goes that President and Mrs Coolidge were visiting a government farm in Kentucky one day and after arrival were taken off on separate tours. When Mrs Coolidge passed the chicken pens she paused to ask her guide how often the rooster could be expected to perform his duty. 'Dozens of times a day' was her guide's reply. She was most impressed by this and said, 'Please tell that to the President.'

When the President was duly informed of the rooster's performance he was initially dumbfounded. Then a thought occurred to him. 'Was this with the same hen each time?' he inquired. 'Oh no, Mr President, a different one each time' was his host's reply. The President nodded slowly, smiled and said, ''Tell that to Mrs Coolidge!'