Calvin Coolidge: Classical Statesman.

AuthorArnold, Gordon Dakota
PositionBiography

In a 2012 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Adi Godrej, the chairman of Godrej Group, offered a sensible truism. "There are far too many politicians in this world," Godrej maintained, and "too few statesmen" (Frangos 2012, para. 4). Godrej's statement decries the modern failure to live up to the ideal of political leadership as outlined by classical philosophers. The classical philosophers Plato and Aristotle outlined a vision of political leadership inextricably linked with the pursuit of virtue and the common good. For the end of virtue, the classical statesman unites moral character, political thought, and political action. In marked contrast, modern political thinkers often disavow the entire notion that virtue can be linked with politics (Holloway 2008, 2). For such moderns, it is particular results, not moral considerations, that matter. According to this view, the task of the politician is not to minister--it is to administer. Given the increasing divorce between virtue and politics, observers can hardly avoid inquiring as to whether an older type of statesmanship can ever be restored. Statesmanship, as beleaguered as it seems, is not unprecedented within America's political tradition. Analyses of familiar and titanic statesmen such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are numerous and often insightful. One modern American leader who both understood and acted upon principles of classical statesmanship but who has been unjustly ignored is Calvin Coolidge.

Calvin Coolidge, the stoic New Englander who served as president from 1923 to 1929, exerted leadership between two momentous ages. His presidency, during a quiet period wedged between two World Wars and two Progressive eras, is often neglected and considered inconsequential. This dismissal ignores the considerable accomplishments of the Coolidge era. Economically, Coolidge presided over low inflation, low unemployment, and budget surpluses during every year of his presidency (Shlaes 2013, 6). In foreign policy, Coolidge repudiated both isolationism and Wilsonianism and kept the nation at peace (Silver 1982, 2). Most importantly, Coolidge quickly restored public confidence in the government at a time when it was at a low ebb (Silver 1982, 3). These accomplishments were made possible by Coolidge's devotion to the virtues of honesty, hard work, and individual thrift. Historian Donald R. McCoy (1968) observes that the foundation of Coolidge's philosophy was that "the citizen has an obligation to serve, and to do good work--idleness was fundamentally sinful" (155). For Coolidge, as for the classical thinkers, politics involved more than producing legislation; it involved civic service and sacrifice.

Coolidge's presidency, epitomizing fiscal conservatism and foreign non-interventionism, has been dismissed by some historians as an outlier at best (Silver 1982, viii). These historians often identify the president's peace and prosperity as a ruse that simply shrouded the looming economic turbulence of the Great Depression (Silver 1982, viii). Some hostile contemporaries even suggested that Coolidge avoided running for a second full-term because he foresaw the impending calamity and wanted to shirk the responsibility of presiding over it (Urofsky 2000, 392). The influential satirist H. L. Mencken "defended" Coolidge by positing that the president slept too much to foresee the Depression. Indeed, Mencken venomously asserted that Coolidge's only "talent" was his capacity for slumber. The satirist mused that while "Nero fiddled, Coolidge only snored" (Dehgan 2003, 152). Such a politician, disparaged or ignored by historians and scarcely thought of by the general populace, seems at first glance an odd fit for the category of classical statesmanship. Yet understanding the leadership of Coolidge provides indispensable lessons for restoring the tradition of classical statesmanship in America. What the classical writers believed about the nature of politics and statesmanship will be discussed in section one below, which will describe statesmanship according to Plato and Aristotle. Plato provides a guide for a statesman's political knowledge in that he emphasizes the principle of justice and the need to serve the good of the whole. Aristotle, however, recognizes the need for adapting pursuit of the common good to particular circumstances. The classical statesman combines Plato's abstract, almost ethereal wisdom with Aristotle's sense of practicality and notion of kingship.

Coolidge's nearly total exile from the annals of the modern academy is likely due precisely to his exhibiting traits of classical statesmanship. Modern historians gauge presidential greatness not by the virtue and knowledge of any given leader, but by their capacity to impose change, especially putatively progressive change, on the country; sometimes against its will. In the words of popular historian H. W. Brands, "great presidents are those who change the course of American history.... Great presidents are opportunists: They acknowledge America's strong bias toward the status quo and recognize that large changes are possible only when the status quo has been severely compromised" (Brands 2012, paras. 16-17). Brands's measure of greatness has less to do with classical statesmanship, however, than with the modern idea, supposedly epitomized by a thinker like Friedrich Nietzsche, that human history is the story of how the will to power, "the unexhausted, procreative will of life," tears down old meanings and creates new ones (Nietzsche 1982, 226). Nietzsche is usually interpreted as a nihilist glorifying unfettered, assertive, arbitrary will. Statesmanship, for Brands, is found not in the man whose "understanding rules desire" as Aristotle envisioned; it is found in the overman, whose passion for disruption is unleashed on history (Steinberger 2000, 380). Section two will explore the modern challenge to classical statesmanship and how the latter relates to the public career of Calvin Coolidge.

This disavowal of classical statesmanship is not confined to the universities; quite the contrary, it has penetrated the highest ranks of the American government. One of Coolidge's successors to the presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt, embraced the non-classical, modern understanding of statesmanship. In his Commonwealth Club Address, Roosevelt declared that "the task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of [the Declaration's natural] rights in terms of a growing and changing social order" (Frohnen 2008, 436). Elsewhere he noted that great statesmen possess the uncanny ability to "transfuse with new meaning the concepts of our constitutional fathers" (Roosevelt 1938, 68). The statesman, for Roosevelt, is under no obligation to protect and communicate higher values such as virtue. They must instead act decisively to reorient their nation towards new ideas for a new time. For classically minded leaders such as Coolidge, conversely, the art of statesmanship entailed a devotion to virtue and eternal truth.

By the modern metric of greatness, Coolidge utterly failed. He neither pursued nor desired the transformation of the American republic. Instead, Coolidge believed that "to preserve also is to build, and to save is to construct" (Coolidge 1924, 173). Statesmanship, for Coolidge, demanded not revolution, but reflection. At a sesquicentennial celebrating the Declaration of Independence, Coolidge made clear his understanding that the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration were, quite simply, "immortal truths," due to their convergence with reason as well as Christian revelation (Coolidge 1926, 446-449). His job as president, therefore, did not involve "transfusing new meaning" into America's first documents; it rested instead in protecting these "charters of freedom and justice" (Coolidge 1926, 442). Though not earning him accolades from historians fond of assertive executive power, Coolidge's consistency on this point connects him with Plato's notion of statesmanship, as when he agrees with Plato that education for leadership must recognize the "binding force of right, of justice, and of truth" (Coolidge 1924, 216). In section three, this theme will be further explored. It will be suggested that Coolidge's political thought converged considerably with Plato's political principles. Coolidge's view of education and religion as means to instill eternal truth and virtue into a citizenry was basic to the president's view of politics.

Coolidge's statesmanship consisted not solely of his capacity for political knowledge, but also of his demonstration of this knowledge as a leader The classical writers believe that political understanding divorced entirely from political action does little to better a polis. Aristotle evinced this belief when developing three political virtues: prudence, magnanimity, and patriotism. Prudence balances political idealism with political pragmatism, properly navigating between the real and the ideal. Magnanimity balances healthy ambition with humility, and the statesman is always vigilant about his or her country's well-being. Patriotism involves legislating for the common good and properly communicating the nation's guiding principles. Ultimately, the just statesman does this to develop better citizens, not simply to produce legislation. Section four will demonstrate that Coolidge practiced all three of Aristotle's political virtues during his public leadership, making him a guide for American statesmanship in the modern era.

When Coolidge ran for president in the 1920s, Dwight Morrow, a long-time friend, held that Coolidge possessed unique qualities. Coolidge, Morrow said, "was a very unusual man and a strange combination of a transcendental philosopher and a practical politician" (Chernow 1991, 287). Morrow immerses the president in laudatory language befitting an old friend; yet his statement also attributes to Coolidge the character traits of...

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