Coolidge (45 page)

Coolidge also had to find ways to get the country past the Harding scandals. After all, if Forbes had been such a crook, perhaps there were others in the administration like him. The senators wondered about their old, respected colleague Albert Fall at the Department of Interior. Ashurst noted in his diary that when he saw Fall, unlike Forbes, the man seemed calm. At least for now. The controversy over the western oil concessions likewise simmered on. Thomas Walsh, the Montana senator leading the investigation of Teapot Dome, was not letting up. There was no reason he should have, for more evidence kept coming to light. On the last day of October, irritatingly close to the anniversary of the armistice, the papers were carrying more incredible news: Forbes’s bureau had paid nine times the appraised value for a site in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, and then built a hospital on such shabby plans that no veterans were being served there.

It was hard to know what to say about such theft to groups such as the Spanish-American War veterans, on his schedule for a meeting on November 20. Coolidge took counsel where he could, meeting with Hughes and others. On November 19, Coolidge dined with another key character in the drama, Attorney General Daugherty. Daugherty was defending the authority of Navy Secretary Denby, who was generally under fire for his support of the transfer of Teapot Dome to Interior’s authority. One reason Teapot Dome stayed in the news was that Harry Sinclair was now telling the public that production could quadruple to 20,000 barrels a day over the current 5,000 level. Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana was making clear that Fall might have been bribed by Sinclair; now Sinclair was getting his reward. Walsh was going for blood.

The tension of Coolidge’s big speech hung over the White House. Coolidge’s walks with Starling calmed him, and he was beginning to take Starling’s counsel to exercise. Farm boys, who are accustomed to being around animals, tend to walk carefully with their hands close to their sides or behind their backs: animals startle unexpectedly. Coolidge was no exception. Starling taught Coolidge to stride, using his arms, and after a few days, Coolidge did try, putting his head way up and his arms out so far that Starling had to stay a few feet behind. Starling believed he understood his new boss; the Congregationalists of Vermont were not so different from the Presbyterians from the Kentucky Hills. Both prized their independence. What others took for indecision in Coolidge, Starling judged to be just the independent man luxuriating in his freedom of choice. After his walks, Coolidge went to the mail room; if Ira Smith, the mail officer, was not there, Coolidge would park his feet on his desk and read through the incomings; when Ira was there, Coolidge looked for “mails”—he used the plural—from his father.

The first lady for her part did not need to learn how to march. Grace marched naturally, and could go miles in a day, dog and Secret Service along with her. Not only dogs but birds came to her White House; visitors found her communing with birds, cats, and dogs. She found herself conferring frequently with Dr. Boone, the junior navy doctor who had introduced her to Mercersburg, where the boys were studying. With no children of her own in the White House, Grace made other children welcome, including the Boones’ daughter, Suzanne, whom she invited for a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom. In the morning, the Secret Service man Jim Haley, whom Coolidge called “Ol’ Man Haley,” played with the girl. Suzanne got Coolidge to smile.

Still, as the date of the opening of Congress and the presidential message approached, Coolidge’s temper grew yet shorter. What if it didn’t go well; what if the tax plan flopped? The economy of the country mixed in his head with his private economy. The presidential salary seemed enormous, at $75,000. But there were plenty of costs to being head of state, including feeding the White House staff, the task of the housekeeper Mrs. Jaffray. The president applied the same scrutiny to the household budget as he did to the federal budget. Later Mrs. Jaffray described her shock. “The president of the United States for the first time took a personal interest in the actual management of the White House.” Coolidge observed that though everyone else drove cars, the housekeeper was still in her brougham, pulled by horses. He noticed that she shopped at first-class establishments, as well, whereas she could be saving. The custard pies did not please him; the corn muffins were also unsatisfactory, and Mrs. Coolidge sent to Massachusetts for a different recipe. Defensive, Mrs. Jaffray tried to point out the savings. The same Prohibition that had taken revenue from Andy Mellon’s Treasury actually yielded a tiny serendipitous savings for the White House; wine, an expensive component of state dinners, need no longer be supplied. But Coolidge did not seem entirely satisfied, and inquired into other areas. Also unlike the other presidents, this one, she noted, “liked at least the privilege of discussing the menus.”

Even Grace was not immune to the president’s ill humor. Around Thanksgiving, she went to Fort Myer to try riding with the assistant secretary of war. She looked wonderful in riding clothes. But when Grace came back, Coolidge forbade her to go again. “I think you’ll find,” he said, “you’ll do well in this job if you don’t try anything new.” One Sunday, Dr. Boone came upon the president in his bedroom reading the speech aloud. Coolidge was worried about whether his vocal cords would be strong when he delivered the address. Others also wondered why Coolidge had opted to break with precedent and read the document aloud. The speech would be broadcast across the country, the first broadcast in which multiple commercial stations hooked up to carry a presidential address. The technology added to the glamour but also fueled the anxiety. Senator Watson of Indiana was not enthusiastic about Coolidge, but he appreciated the man’s bravery. It was only eight months from the humiliating adjournment at which the senators had chosen not to thank Coolidge. “It really was a bold thing for him to appear before the two houses of Congress to deliver a message,” he thought. In addition, of course, there was Coolidge’s delivery: Coolidge, by Watson’s terms or indeed those of other senators, was hardly a strong orator.

A packed House of Representatives was waiting when Coolidge arrived to speak on December 6 at 12:30. Mrs. Coolidge sat with Mrs. New, the wife of the postmaster general; Alice Longworth and Samuel Gompers were also in reserved seats. “His high-pitched voice reached all parts of the galleries,”
The New York Times
noted. Coolidge set out his goals lucidly. “Our main problems are domestic problems,” he said. The federal household mattered most. The budget system was working. He would maintain it. But he would also prioritize new tax law to change the tax system. Congress had to join him. Tax-exempt securities should lose their special status. It was wrong to tax earned incomes, and movie tickets, as the country now did. There needed to be a revision in the progressivity of the code.

By slowing down for the budget, Coolidge had license to supply detail, and to work out, for the public, Mellon’s thinking for the first time. If you lowered tax rates, it might sound as though you were losing revenue. But lowering surtaxes, Coolidge said, “will not greatly reduce the revenue from that source, and may in the future actually increase it.” To underline the seriousness of his tax message, Coolidge had taken the time to write out a note in his hand, a facsimile of which was then published in the papers, saying that “to reduce war taxes is to give every home a better chance. . . . Of all services which the Congress can render to the country I have no hesitation in declaring this one to be paramount.” And the president threw a challenge to the lawmakers: “The country wants this measure to have the right of way over many others.”

This speech impressed Coolidge’s audience beyond anything it had expected. Some Americans focused on the level of preparation, which betrayed a man far more serious than the one depicted in a joke about the Coolidge presidency, that he was “the accident of an accident.” France liked the speech; so did U.S. industry. Though he had not backed agricultural subsidy, a farm regulators’ group, the National Association of Commissioners, Secretaries and Departments of Agriculture, found the speech acceptable. State bankers endorsed the Mellon Plan. Even Samuel Gompers of the AFL dutifully offered praise: “Pretty good, as a whole.” Journalists began to trumpet Coolidge’s possibilities in such exaggerated tones that the editors at
The Wall Street Journal
had to laugh. “It is almost pitiful if it were not so funny to observe the newspapers which a week ago were accusing Coolidge of sitting on the fence and of having no opinions of his own falling over their own feet to join the procession,” the
Journal
wrote on December 8. The powerful Senator Watson of Indiana pronounced to all that “his future success was assured.” Frank Stearns, energized, declared what the country already knew: Coolidge was running for office and would be the Republican candidate in 1924.

The audience at the House of Representatives noticed that Coolidge’s style of delivery was different. Harding had liked to twin concepts; his speeches had rolled along, alliteration following alliteration, like a story or a steamboat upon the Mississippi. Coolidge still spoke artillery style, almost as briefly as he had in the now-famous telegram to Gompers. League of Nations—topic closed. World Court: yes. Bonus: no. Help for disabled veterans: yes. Merchant fleet: move to private ownership. Recognize Soviet Russia: not until it recognized its obligations. In all, the new president telegraphed positions on thirty-three items, including the question of lynching. Congress ought to use its power to prevent and punish lynching, Coolidge said. By the time he was done, Silent Cal had uttered seven thousand words.

The radio, the new medium, had proved Coolidge’s friend. On the radio you didn’t need to have a strong voice but a clear one. And Coolidge’s was clear—it had wire in it, as someone would say later. The next day, the St. Louis station, KSD, telephoned the White House to ask about a small problem: “that grating noise.” It had been the rustle of Coolidge’s papers as he turned the page. But most impressive of all was Coolidge’s boldness. It takes guts to stake your presidency on an issue, and Coolidge had done that with Mellon’s tax bill.

Within days Coolidge showed his new strength in two moves. The first was to force the Grand Old Party to make Cleveland the site of the 1924 convention, a show of his new strength in the party. He also took time to place an additional demand on the party: cut back the party platform. He didn’t want to repeat the error he had made as a young politician in writing the Massachusetts party plan with all the gifts to progressives. It was wrong to have a platform with too many “catch planks,” specific gifts to specific groups to corral votes. Lincoln in 1860 had demanded a short platform, in fact less than two thousand words; Coolidge sought something like that. Length of texts mattered, just as it had in Massachusetts.

Next Coolidge broadcast another speech, this one only eleven and a half minutes: a eulogy for Harding that Coolidge delivered from the White House. Men came and set up a microphone in his study, which was then connected by land wire to WCAP of Washington, WEAF of New York, and WJAR of Providence, Rhode Island. This time 25 million people listened, the papers recounted with awe. The week marked a boom for radio receiving sets, as they were still known. That year only 400,000 families owned radio sets; the figure would shortly move into the millions. The medium seemed to Coolidge a marvelous accident that had just arrived for him. It obviated the kind of endless touring that had brought down Wilson and Harding.

At the Gridiron dinner a few days later, Coolidge’s new status was evident. The Gridiron Club outdid itself with a special skit about the endless pilgrim commemorations, “Pilgrims of 1924.” In the background, the club placed an image of the
Mayflower
, the presidential yacht for which the president’s fondness was already known. Frank Stearns, John Weeks of the War Department, and even Henry Cabot Lodge played pilgrims. Hiram Johnson, Bob La Follette, and William Borah—the rebel Republicans—all appeared dressed as braves. John and Calvin also went, and the club made a point of welcoming them to the ranks of the White House sons. The club had invited presidents’ living sons to the dinner; ten were able to attend, including Abram Garfield, Robert Taft, and Richard Cleveland.

That December, the Coolidges, quietly satisfied, began to plan for 1924. Coolidge sought to reduce the number of weekdays he would need to spend with visitors to the White House. He took a count and, noticing there were now six dogs in the White House, wrote his father, “I wish you would ask Aurora if she would not like two or three of them. We also have two cats. We could spare her a cat.” Aurora Pierce, the housekeeper in Plymouth, did not, however, necessarily want a dog. The
Mayflower
was a yacht, but he and Grace found utility in it; it became their vehicle for garnering support for legislation in 1924. On December 15, they ignored a chilly wind—it was nothing like Lake Champlain at that season, after all—and took Senator Robert Howell of Nebraska, Senator Peter Norbeck of South Dakota, and representatives Walter Newton and William Green of Minnesota and Iowa, respectively, out on the water and down the river as far as Quantico.

Fog impeded another such trip: the agriculture secretary, Senator Watson, and John T. Adams, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, were held up at the pier with the presidential party to outwait the fog, but in the end the trip was abandoned. Some in the White House were already exhausted by the pace of it all. Slemp, riding with Dr. Boone, confessed that he could handle the clerical work of his job as secretary and he could handle the political work—but not both.

On December 18 came word that the Christmas tree, despite its special handling, had arrived in Washington with one great limb broken; the navy was contriving to fix it. The next day, Henry Ford gave an official endorsement—but it was more like a blessing—of the idea of a second Coolidge term. That left the Democrats, who had supported the idea of a Henry Ford candidacy, in an awkward position. The United States, Ford said, was “safe with Coolidge.” There was one other fact that made the holiday brighter: Nicholas Longworth, just elected House majority leader at the beginning of the month, was making it clear that in 1924 he planned to push the tax legislation to a vote before the bonus vote.