Coolidge (36 page)

By Calvin Coolidge Jr.

The Boston Sunday Advertiser has given me the privilege of stating how I felt at the Inauguration and what impressed me the most. I saw my father inaugurated. I felt very sorry to see Mr. Marshall go out of office.

I was very proud of my father. I liked to look at the ministers of other countries. They were dressed up in gold lace and bright colors. When I went out on the platform I saw the crowd extending way down the street. They looked very nice.

It impressed me very much to see the men of the Supreme Court. They looked sort of business like.

Before a crowd of 100,000 Harding then gave his speech, far grander and more ambitious than Coolidge’s and of high quality. America must not expect too much or experiment too much, he said. He warned against change for its own sake. It was time to retrench and give up perpetual progressivism. “No altered system will work a miracle,” he said. “Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system.” Harding might pursue some items on the progressive agenda. But he sought no Square Deal, such as Theodore Roosevelt had offered. What this administration wanted was to find its way back to the Old Deal.

It might achieve that. “Owing to mechanical device,” the invention of the microphone, Harding’s voice “carried perfectly, for great distances,” commented
The Washington Post
. As Harding spoke, a shaft of sunlight hit him, seeming to bless his remarks. Beneath the new president stood marines, sailors, and soldiers, each group bearing standards, a reminder of that group asking the most of the new administration, the millions of veterans across the country. A group of wounded soldiers from Walter Reed sat not far away from the grass, many in wheelchairs, missing limbs. Shortly they would be loaded onto army trucks to go back to the hospital, a clumsy, pitiful sight. Harding stopped to promise them that he would address their concern. “I want to assure you that a generous country will never forget the services you rendered,” he said.

Then it was off to the Senate to renew his bonds with old colleagues, men who would make it possible to turn his plans into law. That too, Coolidge could see, was a rousing success, for the senators were delighted at the surprise visit. Senator Lodge had already set the stage for Harding by clearing the names of his cabinet nominees with fellow Republicans, the majority. To general merriment, Harding read aloud the names of his cabinet, which were approved on the spot. If any administration could take care of the veterans’ troubles and the country’s as well, this one could. When Harding read off before the Senate and Coolidge the name of Albert Fall for his cabinet, Fall’s brother senators began to cheer loudly and joke that he must leave the Senate floor, where no private citizen was allowed to sit. “Throw him out!” they joked. Someone suggested to Coolidge that Fall be affirmed instantly in his new post without the formal confirmation process; the motion passed unanimously, to more clapping. It was a dazzling display for a novice to observe: Harding had so many friends. Another was Senator James Watson of Indiana, who was fond of both Hardings. “He could smoke a cigarette, or a cigar, or a pipe, he could take a nip of liquor without ever using it to excess,” Watson later reflected back with affection about Harding. The new president, Watson said, personified trustworthiness: “He had one of those affidavit faces whose very appearance carries conviction.” Only in Washington could Coolidge appreciate the extent of Harding’s web of contacts; the Hardings’ dearest friends were the McLeans; Edward McLean, conveniently, owned
The Washington Post.

All the cabinet members but Mellon would be sworn in the next day. Edward Douglass White, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States, was instructed to swear in the new Treasury secretary at once. As it turned out, White, not being a notary, was not qualified, and Mellon would have to take his oath with the others the next day. But the signal that the Treasury must go first was the important part. The economy came first in this new era. Harding and Coolidge now had an opportunity Coolidge alone had not enjoyed. Together, the pair could do more than navigate the river. They could change its course.

Nine
: “A Most Insignificant Office”

Washington, D.C.

THE COAT AND TAILS
lay on the bed in suite 328 of the Willard Hotel. These were the overalls of the vice presidency, as one journalist wrote. The work itself was as clear as the hay before his father in the Vermont field. The task of the vice president was to assist the president in getting the department heads, the cabinet members, the legislators, and the press to go along when Harding implemented his “rigid yet sane economy,” to back the president up in saying “no.”

In a city accustomed to “yes,” that was a tall order. Washington in 1921 held a higher opinion of itself than even Boston did, and found little evidence to contradict its own opinion. The architecture itself saluted the government’s grandeur. Buildings in the District of Columbia stood well below the height of the Capitol dome, the result of long-standing zoning laws; the effect was to rank government above commerce. Union Station, where the Coolidges had arrived from New England, had been designed “to distinctly subordinate it to the Capitol,” as one architectural journal noted. The society life felt more French than American, more prewar than postwar. Protocol demanded that the wives of senators and congressmen call formally at the homes of the cabinet officers. Each call had to be returned, and then the rounds began again. “Imagine five hundred or more women going around leaving cards with the stolid industry of mail carriers,” one observer, Wilson’s Treasury secretary and son-in-law, William McAdoo, wrote in wonderment. That such etiquette was demanded amid the mud, mosquitos, and infection that were the District of Columbia seemed absurd.

But if anyone could charm the United States’ capital city, the Hardings could. That the first couple proved from Harding’s very first hours in the presidency, with the controversy over the inaugural ball. Washington craved a ball. Yet Harding himself had promised that that year would be a year of “putting all celebration aside.” His inauguration compromise was reasonably, if not perfectly, principled. No public ball took place, just as Florence Harding had informed Grace. But Edward McLean, the owner of the
Post
, and his wife, Evalyn, hosted their own private dinner. Three long tables set with a fancy gold and silver services and seating a hundred each were laid out beneath candelabras and Barberini tapestries at the McLean home on I Street. This dinner, as it turned out, was the most elaborate, the papers reported, since Washington had hosted the Prince of Wales.

Mrs. Harding was performing similar magic. She made a big demonstration of forgoing a $10,000 allowance for redecoration of the president’s quarters and brought her own furniture instead. In addition, on the very day of inauguration she opened the gates of the White House to receive throngs on the grounds. “Let ’em look in if they want,” she shouted to the maids when they moved to close the curtains on the spectators who pressed their noses onto the glass. “It’s their White House.” Yet in private she maintained an elaborate wardrobe; the tails of six quadrupeds hung upon her breast when she greeted the Coolidges at Union Station, whereas Grace sported only a modest fur collar. At the McLeans’ inaugural dinner, Grace had, just as might be expected, found herself sartorially outclassed by Mrs. Harding and indeed the entire crowd, especially the hostess, Evalyn McLean, in silver brocade from Paris.

Even in these early hours, the Coolidges sensed that they might never catch up to Washington. Their hosts, the McLeans, were not merely wealthy but spectacularly so; Evalyn owned the Hope diamond and had recently worn it when attending the theater with Florence Harding. The McLeans maintained a second home in Virginia, outside the capital; Harding liked to golf there. Edward McLean’s efforts had proved indispensable during the campaign period: he had assigned another newspaper he owned,
The Cincinnati Enquirer
, to endorse Harding over James Cox of nearby Dayton, Ohio.

Grace’s dinner partner that first night at the inaugural dinner was General Pershing, the great hero of the war. Pershing had one son, Warren; his wife and daughters had died in a tragic fire before the war. Grace won the general over by talking about his son and hers. Coolidge found the transition less easy. In fact, as often happened at big moments, an illness came over him: this time it was a stomachache. He might be silent, but the lack of formality in the inaugural proceedings disturbed him; it was unlike the Massachusetts inaugurations. Any semblance of unity had disappeared when the crowd had raced from the Senate chamber and his own address to the East Portico. The sight of President Wilson in his last hours at the White House had also been striking. Next to Harding, who walked up and down steps with ease, Wilson seemed old: the office had done that to him. As the first evening passed, however, even Coolidge could feel himself being charmed. The owner of the Hope diamond personally walked Coolidge to his seat, mixed him up a dose of water with bicarbonate of soda, and made sure he drank it; then she got him another. The McLeans had the ability to establish instant intimacy, and told the Coolidges their story: Evalyn had endured a brutal car accident as a girl and, just a year before, had lost her son Vinson in another car accident. Ned McLean moved in a faster crowd than Bostonians were accustomed to. But in his way McLean was merely the kind of friend Coolidge was developing in Clarence Barron, a press man.

The morning after the inauguration, the Hardings demonstrated their ability to negotiate public sensibilities once again. The Calvary Baptist and First Baptist churches, the two big churches of their denomination, waited in vain for attendance by the new first couple. But the Hardings did make an all-important gesture of observing the Sabbath when, at Grasslands Country Club that morning, Harding chose not to golf along with the others. Along with Harding were senators Eugene Hale of Maine and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey; Frelinghuysen was seeking Harding’s backing for a coal commission.

Later in the day, at the White House, the Hardings received crowds of friends from Marion while Harding contemplated assistant secretary appointments; he had already met with Secretary of State Hughes over tensions in Panama and Costa Rica. Giving a powerhouse like Hughes, the 1916 Republican presidential candidate, such a prominent cabinet position was itself a testament to Harding’s confidence and savvy. Mrs. Harding too moved forward with confidence; she not only opened the White House but let it be known that the house would be open to the people routinely for teas and lawn parties, as well as, word came out, an Easter egg hunt for children on the South Lawn. The Hardings together boldly terminated a congressional perk. Heretofore congressmen had handed out tickets to tour the White House as favors; Mrs. Harding ruled that people could enter without tickets. An intense, anxious woman, she followed politics and opined confidently. The White House staff was already a bit afraid of her. She suffered from kidney disease and had brought her own doctor, C. E. Sawyer, to Washington. Generously Harding made Sawyer a brigadier general; a second doctor, Joel Boone, who was with the navy, served on the presidential yacht, the
Mayflower
.

The Hardings had McLean and the
Post
, but neither they nor the Republicans stopped there when it came to managing their reputation. Will Rogers, a stage, radio, and print humorist, functioned as an arbiter of American taste. Though he was an old rodeo hand, not a professor, Americans looked to him for political analysis as well. Once Rogers endorsed a politician, the country could like him; indeed, it almost had to. William Hays, the Republicans’ press adviser, ensured that the necessary meeting between the new president and Rogers occurred, with Harding earning a rave review. After the meeting, Rogers wrote some notes of his visit down in his hotel room: “Didn’t even get to start to introduce me before the president said ‘Hello, where’s your chewing gum?’ So instead of me telling him anything funny, he starts in repeating things I had said in the Midnight Follies for years.” Harding, Rogers thought, represented the right mix of country and power. The man made mistakes, but undid them by acknowledging them. Harding was no hayseed. “So the fellow who tells you he’s right from a farm to the White House is cuckoo,” he reported. “I told him I wanted to tell him the latest political jokes. He said, ‘I know ’em. I appointed most of them.’ So I saw I couldn’t match humor with this man so I called it a day.” It didn’t hurt the new administration’s popularity either that, despite advertised cutbacks, it was clearly offering some jobs, especially patronage jobs at the Justice Department. “Most of the job seekers who came to Washington for the inauguration and pie cutting want to see Harry M. Daugherty,” noted
The Boston Globe
. Harding had already made it clear that he would force an extra session of Congress so that he might exploit the momentum of a new presidency for more support for his legislation.

The Coolidges kept up their efforts in those first weeks in Washington. Grace took her new social challenges very seriously, visiting cards and all, though, as she admitted with a laugh, most of her time in dining rooms theretofore had been spent on the floor, laying out track for the boys’ miniature trains. Washingtonians noted approvingly that Grace “kept her wits at the end of her tongue.” From the kind Mrs. Marshall, her predecessor, she learned she had to preside over a luncheon for Senate wives in the Senate Office Building on Tuesdays. That Grace deemed unfair: she must “at once become the presiding officer of the advanced class.” On Wednesdays, the wife of the vice president received guests in her drawing room; the open house was announced not by invitation but in the society section of the newspaper.

That meant the crowds piled in; one day, Mrs. Coolidge learned that a bellboy was out on the street, shouting, “This way to Mrs. Coolidge’s apartment.” Many hundreds of people materialized and, as Grace wrote to her sorority sisters, they treated access to her open houses as a kind of right: “A few draw a chair right up to the tea table and proceed to make a ‘square meal.’ ” In a letter to Foster Stearns, the Stearnses’ son, Grace did say what was on the tip of her tongue: “I’ll never dare to be ‘at home’ again for fear somebody will be crushed to death.” Coolidge suggested that if the Hardings could have lawn parties, they, the Coolidges, should have sidewalk parties.