Coolidge And Limited Government

Calvin Coolidge is usually remembered as “Silent Cal,” a pro-business placeholder in the Roaring Twenties, or a punchline about doing nothing. We don’t buy that version. With Dr. Sean Beienberg, we unpack the Calvin Coolidge who shows up in his words: a president with a real constitutional theory, a sharp concern about human nature and power, and a surprisingly direct way of teaching civics through major addresses.

We start with the backstory people miss: Coolidge’s rise from small-town New England politics, his belief that state governments should be active, and his conviction that the federal government must stay limited. From there, we dig into the rule of law theme that runs through his leadership, including his view that even flawed policies like Prohibition must be handled through constitutional processes rather than shortcuts. That thread leads straight into his first inaugural address and its focus on separation of powers, federalism, and fiscal restraint rooted in stewardship, not vibes.

Then we spend serious time on the 1925 Arlington Memorial Day speech, where Coolidge lays out one of the clearest presidential defenses of federalism you’ll hear. He even invokes The Federalist Papers and explains why federal spending and grants-in-aid can weaken state capacity by training citizens to look to Washington first. If you care about limited government, the 10th Amendment, constitutionalism, and how civic habits form over time, this conversation gives you a framework that still maps onto today’s debates.

Subscribe for more American civics and presidential speeches, share the episode with a friend who thinks Coolidge is “just quiet,” and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to Civics in a year. I really like episodes like this because I don't know a whole lot about the president we're going to talk about today with Dr. Sean Beinberg. And that president is Calvin Coolidge. To be very honest, there's not a whole lot out there about him, but Dr. Beinberg, today we're talking about kind of his views on limited government, specifically his inaugural address and his Arlington Memorial Day speech. So even though Calvin Coolidge was not much of a talker, he did have some speeches. So what can you tell us about Calvin Coolidge in general, but also his speeches on limited government?

From Vermont To National Power

Harding’s Death And Midnight Oath

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Yeah. So Coolidge, I think, is a wildly underappreciated president. And he's also, to the extent he's a he is known, he is misunderstood. There is a caricature of him in the history books, even by some of his biographers, which is basically that Coolidge was a complete laissez-faire, Ayn Randian, libertarian, hated anything about government, and was just like endlessly slobbering over business. And that is not accurate. Coolidge is, in fact, partly why I appreciate him so much, somebody who has really, really deep constitutional uh views that come across uh in these speeches. But a little bit of sort of the backstory of him. Coolidge is born in, he's from Vermont originally, this little tiny town. You can go visit his sort of family home there. It's like the town is basically the gas station in his house. It's really up in the middle of nowhere Vermont. So he sort of moves up through Republican politics from being basically kind of a small-town lawyer type out in western Massachusetts. Uh he becomes governor, he becomes a state legislator and governor. And then the one thing that's interesting is that he's actually on the moderately progressive side of Massachusetts politics when he's in state politics. And like Al Smith, who we keep talking about, the people don't understand, don't understand his political theory. Coolidge has the view that the state governments should be much more active and the federal government should be limited. So when he says limited government, he really is thinking more about the federal government. But we'll we'll come back to the speech part in a second. So some fun trivia about him, I suppose, is he is picked as vice president uh for Harding, sort of seemingly almost by accident, if you read it. Like there's not this, it's like, yeah, let's go with Coolidge. All right, and then the convention just sort of get rolls with it. He's popular because he's done, he helped put down a strike, a police strike in the state. Basically, like you got to go back to work. Like people need to have their police officers. But uh Harding is president and Harding dies, right? It's what's I was thinking about this. You know, we haven't had a president leave office since Nixon. Whereas since you and I were before talking about you know death by lightning in Garfield, right? Think about it if you were paying attention to politics between, say, Lincoln and McKinley. You're having actually quite a few presidents go down in your your era, or if you think at the same time, Harding to Kennedy, right? That's still several presidents leaving. And so, and you could work back and do the 19th century, right? With Harrison and so it's you know, it's not nearly as common as it used to be to act. I mean, there's a joke you could make that in terms of survivability, that the presidency is like one of the most dangerous jobs in the world in the 19th century. Uh yeah. So uh so Harding, so Hart when Harding Harding dies, we've talked about that. Coolidge is basically up in his family, again, you don't even want to call it a town, but and his father, he gets like basically tapped awake. Coolidge famously likes sleeping. He gets tapped awake in the middle of the night, and they say, Harding is dead, like you're the president. He's like, All right, well, Dad, I guess you gotta get up and give me the oath of office. And so he does, and then he goes back to bed. He's just like that's his sort of temperament of like fine in the morning. Uh I guess one other kind of fun piece of trivia that Coolidge is very sort of serious. It's actually these very beautiful comments he makes about his wife. They're basically like, I'm the boring one, and she's the one that's like joy and life in our family. But she's very elegant, very, very distinguished. He, you know, he has letters saying, like, I can't believe she's slumming it with me. She's so much better than me. So it's very kind of cute. Um but when he's when he becomes president, somebody in the South, I think in Mississippi, sends him a raccoon as a gift. And the expectation is that the Coolidges will eat it, but they instead become fond of it. And so there's these amazing pictures of Grace Coolidge like holding this hissing raccoon in the White House.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

So it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So is that considered a presidential pet? I guess it's a raccoon.

Rule Of Law And Constitutional Duty

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, I guess it is. So so Coolidge, so Coolidge becomes president, and we he's come up a couple of times for his constitutional views, but he's very committed to the rule of law and constitutionalism, which is why he's actually broadly popular, partly why he's popular even across the spectrum uh of the Republican Party. So William Bora, who we talked about with Alice Roosevelt. So, like Mr. Alice Roosevelt, I guess, if you want to think of it that way.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

I think that that is an appropriate way to name him Mr.

Human Nature, Frugality, And Stewardship

Arlington Speech And Federalism Explained

Grants-In-Aid And State Responsibility

Underpolicing And The State’s Job

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Alice Roosevelt. So he's arguably the most influential of the Republican progressives. And he's very he's actually like works well with Coolidge, and Coolidge wants him as his vice president. And that's a major theme of Coolidge's kind of moving to the speech part of his first inaugural address, which is the importance of obedience to the rule of law and to constitutionalism. So he's very keen on federalism and separation of powers, and he actually works in civic education into his speeches, which is something that I very much appreciate. Ironically, his one Supreme Court nominee uh is a college buddy named Harlan Stone, who, once he's on the court, actually is not at all interested in federalism and separation of powers. So, particularly federalism. So, very different model of picking justices back then. We talked about this with prohibition, but Coolidge is against prohibition as a violation of federalism. He thinks it's a mistake, but he thinks that the 18th Amendment is the rule of law. And so he this is a theme that comes up in a lot of his speeches, both as governor and as president, that you have to continue to follow the Constitution, and if you don't like it, you fix it by amending the Constitution. Uh so that's one of the themes of his inaugural address. And keep in mind his inaugural address is after he's been president for two years, right? Harding dies in 23. So Coolidge doesn't give the sort of turnover thing until 25 after the 1924 election. So his first inaugural address is a couple years in. But a couple of themes that he he really emphasizes. So one probably most constant theme of his speech of his political thought is situations may change, political economy may change, but human nature is fixed. Right. And so he thinks you have to be, and this is partly why he's so keen on the division of power federally and separation of powers, is that you can't trust anyone with that much power consolidated. Human nature is fundamentally, you know, very he's very into you know Madison, if men were angels, kind of thinking that you wouldn't need a government, right? Uh but we need stuff. So you need um checks on that. He is very uh keen on the idea of frugality and not just like low taxes, that's a theme, but just frugality and not wasting stuff is a theme. He comes from very sort of hard scrabble Vermont kind of Puritan streak. So he actually uses the term conservation, which is really interesting to describe. He uses the term economy for frugality, but he also uses the term conservation because he's very keen on the idea that he that the Congress uh is a steward of the people's resources. And so it's immoral to like waste it. So, you know, he he's not, as I alluded to, he is not hardcore laissez-faire, you know, ultra-conservative in that sense. But he does worry about spending money for the private good of individuals uh instead of public good. He calls that legalized larceny. So he doesn't like transfer spending very much. And he's very much in the idea that the goal of the political economy is to basically create conditions. This is a quote from the inaugural address, to create conditions under which everyone has a better chance of success. But he's very skeptical of material. This is a thing that will come up in the next podcast with the A150 address. But you know, there's this narrative that he's basically the presidency president of hedonism and big business and like roaring 20s and let the good times roll. But he's in fact very old school, very ascetic, very anti-luxury, very anti-waste. He has that old sort of civic Republican streak that we associate with the anti-federalists, like worried about sort of elites running amok and not taking their obligations seriously. So the inaugural address is you know, him basically laying out the marker, saying we don't want to do things like they were done in World War I. This doesn't mean that there's no government, but we need to be basically always attentive to the fact that taxes that exist are because people worked for it. And so you need to be a proper steward, uh steward of that. So that's the inaugural address. Probably my favorite speech, though, that he gives, shockingly, is because I'm a federalism guy, is a few months later at Arlington's, like the memorial address. He gives a speech every year at Arlington. The one in 1925 is focused on constitutionalism. I think it's one of the best summaries and defenses and explanations of federal, uh federalism. So he says, our federal system, distributing powers and responsibilities between the states and the national government is the greatest American contribution to the organization of government over great population in wide areas. And then he goes on, and this is shocking, I think, to a modern audience. He invokes and then thoughtfully explains the Federalist papers in an accurate way. When was the last president you can think of that is actually using an address like that for like actual civic education? So he quotes them, he discusses Federals 45 accurately, and you know, it's not it's not like a lit review where he's like Federalist 39 says this, Fed 45 says this, but he lays out, he cites it, and then he explains it. And he notes a couple of things. One that I think jumps out that does look kind of different, is he says federal spending is much below state spending. And he says it always should remain there in peacetime. Obviously, they've come out of World War I, would it have been higher, but he fears, in some sense, the main theme, other than sort of why federalism is important, but the main kind of theme and worry he says is if we expand federal spending, it will choke out both the ability and the inclination of the states to do their part. Right. And so he worries about a system where you immediately say, ah, there's a problem, it's the federal government's issue, instead of, ah, there's a problem, it's the state government's issue. And so again, this is where his, you know, the folks that just look at his presidency and say, ah, he doesn't believe in any sort of government. And like it's not accurate. He's very into aggressive state government. And he's not saying the feds shouldn't do anything either. I want to be clear about that. But he's very explicit that states need to be active. They have a duty. He uses the term duty a lot. They have a duty and an obligation to work to advance the public good. And he complains that a lot of the states are being too cheap to do that. They're not taking care of their people. He criticizes at one point that they're not policing enough. So he says, like, look, you know, we have a much weaker police system than comparatively, he thinks, compared to uh Britain or France. And that's what he chalks up America's murder rate, too, that America's murder rate is much higher. So he thinks that America is underpoliced. Again, that's you know, the the that may or may not be accurate, but he very much is fearful that the states are basically trying to be super cheap and not do their job. And one thing he really, really hates is we've talked about this before, but grants in aid. And that's when the federal government says, states, if you do this thing that we want that we can't directly do, we will give you money for it. Uh and this is starting to pop up in the 19, particularly the 20s. And so, you know, there's a there's a policy that Coolidge is really critical of, which is to have the federal government give money to the states to run basically like childhood health education programs. Now, Coolidge is not against that. In fact, he's explicit and says Congress absolutely should fund this in DC, in the Army bases, et cetera. But the states can run this themselves. It's about health under the 10th Amendment, right? And so he's critical of this regime because he says, A, it's going to mean that the federal government has to raise more money, which will choke out the states. But B, he argues that it conditions both the people and the states to view the federal government as the primary solver of problems instead of the state government. Basically, those are like, oh, it's the feds thing. If the feds want us to do it, then they'll give us money for it instead of like, no, the state can do it with its own taxes. So his fundamental fear in a lot of his speeches is the erosion of this sort of attitude that Tocqueville talks about, that Americans, particularly with small problems, will look to individual or small institutions instead of saying, what can society do for this? Or more broadly, what can the federal government do? That again, he doesn't think that there's no role for the government, but he worries about sort of the psychological effect going forward, uh or you know, is a sustained thing. So Yakuid has forgotten now that he is wildly, wildly popular as a president. They try to get him to run for a third term. He very famously uh gives a press conference. He's visiting, I want to say Mount Rushmore. He's in the, I think it's in South Dakota. I'm pretty sure it's at Mount Rushmore. And he just walks up and he gives little folded papers to the journalists who are there saying, I choose not to run again. And like, what? He's like, that's it. That's my statement. Not doing anything. That's all he said. Pretty much. Pretty much. So historians have tried to figure out why that is. The the kind of the paranoid version is like he's predicting that the Great Depression coming and doesn't want any part of it. I don't think that's the case. The actual the reason that I think is more likely from my readings of Coolidge, his son scuffs his knee on the tennis court at the White House and gets a freak infection and dies, like right before penicillin is invented. And so there's this absolutely just wrenching quote from Coolidge saying when when he died, the glory and joy of the White House went with him. And then from there, he was just sort of like milling about. So I I tend to think that Coolidge was just kind of burned out and depressed. But yeah, he he he he he would have been easily re-elected. I mean, he he absolutely in 19 so popular in 1924, for example, the Democratic opposition is basically a total Me Too candidate. Like, yeah, we'll do the same thing Coolidge does, but with a couple minor tweaks. I mean, it's very it's and and similarly in 28, as we'll talk about with Hoover, Hoover tries to basically position himself as another Calvin Coolidge, even though he's not really. And Al Smith basically tries to position himself very similar in some ways to Coolidge. I mean, they're gonna have the partisan critiques, but fundamentally, yeah, they both run as sort of Coolidge Me Too types. So Coolidge absolutely would have just walked to re-election, but he didn't think it was right to run for a third term, whether that was, or some have argued it was the George Washington thing, even though he didn't serve two full terms, right? And it's half of Harding's term and one of his own. But so he he just sort of quietly retires, he writes a newspaper column, and that's that's sort of the end of Calum Coolidge.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

That again, I didn't I I know that his nickname was Silent Cow, but I did not know that about his son. And I wonder too, if because he never chose to run for president, like he became four.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

He did in 24. He runs for re-election in 24.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

But prior to that, if he would have never, if he would have just stayed vice president, like it it's these like sliding doors moments, right? For all of these people. So wow. Okay. Well, see, now I'm interested in this guy. In this guy.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

His other son lives for a really long time and sort of is the steward of his legacy. He dies, I don't remember how many years ago, but it's considering he's born in the 20s, or he's yeah, he's he uh or late, late, late teens, early 20s. I can't remember exactly. Um, he he's he's around for a long time, sort of as the the defender of the legacy Coolidge. But yeah, Coolidge, the his could the historians end up being pretty pretty critical of him in some ways because they just view him as another, yeah. They they view him as either Harding or Hoover, and I don't think he's either one of those. But yeah, he he's they I mean, there was talk at one point of even putting him on Mount Rushmore when they were putting it together. Like he was so beloved. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

So okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Well, so now hopefully this, and then when we do the next one on what I think is one of the like handful of best speeches in American history, hopefully folks will appreciate, you know, whether whether you come to like him or not, at least know something about him.

Next Speech Preview And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Yes. Well, thank you for taking that up. So, listeners, our next episode is going to be on Calvin Coolidge and his speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So stay tuned for that one.