Transcripts For CSPAN3 The 20240703

Span two, every saturday American History documents american story. On sunday book tv brings you the latest of nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan 2 comes from these Television Companies and more. You think its just a Community Center . Its way more than that. Comcast is partnering with 1020 centers to create wifi enabled listening so students from lowincome families get the tools they need to be ready for anything. Comcast. Along with these Television Companies support cspan 2 is a Public Service. Okay, it looks mostly settled. Welcome here in the afternoon, and the speech and debate director for the Coolidge Foundation. Our program is an exciting one. We give, we provide opportunities for young High Schoolers to engage in speech and debate and thereby learn and develop and practice the skills of oratory and rhetoric and civil engagement, research, you have to do a lot of that in writing your own speeches as well. Of course along the way we give them a big dose of coolidge material. Hopefully they learned quite a bit about our 30th president. As part of our program, you might be wondering how its structured. We have tournaments across the nation. We have been in idaho earlier this year, weve been in dallas in december, just came back from north carolina. We have tournaments all across the country and qualify students essentially to the coolidge cup which is our chipping chip tournament we hold each the lie july in plymouth, vermont in the coolidge historic site. I know it has been noted that we have our 1890s society here. And we have about 17 only about 5118 90 society to ever been inducted. We have about one third of our inductees here at this conference today. I want to give a hand for that representation. [ applause ]the 1890 society is our debater alumni. Is something you get inducted to in your senior year if youre a particular standout in coolidge speech and debate. Hopefully youve had a chance to maybe converse with them in between the breakfast, lunches and so on and so forth. If you got into a debate with any of them, my apologies. You probably lost and so we probably shouldve given you a little warning. No, but theyre quite good at what they do and we are really proud that they are on our team and that we are able to send them out in the world with such great skills. Speaking of, we have one 1890 Society Member was going to do a coolidge declamation. So allow me to call up a coolidge cup champion, a native of round rock, texas and a current robertson scholar. Matthew tweet. Come on up. In 1890 Young Calvin Coolidge looked out upon his audience of black River Academy and delivered a speech for his high school graduation. Its theme was oratory and history. The year 1890 was fit for our society and for three reasons. First, this was the moment at which coolidge stepped into his role as a powerful and commanding orator. Second, it was spoken to high school students, the same age groups that compete in these incredible tournaments. Finally the speech was about the rich american tradition of history. With that i would like to thank the Coolidge Foundation for putting together a network of some of the brightest, most intellectually curious and principled Young Leaders ive had the chance to interact with. Thank you so much. [ applause ]on august 10, 1922, Calvin Coolidge spoke to the American Bar Association in san francisco, california. The topic of his speech was the limitations of the law. In this excerpt, Calvin Coolidge speaks to the balance between state action and social responsibility. His words echo with truth today. The growing multiplicity of laws has often been observed. The national and state legislatures pass acts. Their courts deliver opinions which each year run into the scores of thousands. A part of this is due to the increasing complexity of an advancing civilization. As new forces come into existence, new relationships are created. New rights and obligations arise which require establishment and definition by legislation and decisions. These are all the natural and inevitable consequences of the growth of great cities. The development of steam and electricity. The use of the corporation as the leading factor in the transaction of business. And the attendant regulation and control of powers created by these new and mighty agencies. The organized effort and insistent desire for equable distribution of the rewards industry for a wider justice, for a more consistent graciousness in human affairs, is one of the most stimulating and hopeful signs of the present era. There ought to be a militant public demand for progress in this direction. The society which is satisfied is lost. But, in the accomplishment of these ends, there needs to be a better understanding of the province of legislation and judicial action. There is a danger of disappointment and disaster unless there be a wider comprehension of the limitations of the law. As a standard of civilization rises, there is necessity for larger and larger outlay to maintain the cost of his existence. Is the activities of government increase, as it extends its field of operations, the initial tax which it requires becomes manifold many times over when it is finally paid by the ultimate consumer. When there is aggravated Financial Condition in increasing amount of regulation and police control, the burden of it all becomes very great. Behind very many of these enlarging activities lies the untenable theory that there is some shortcut to perfection. It is the conceit that there can be a horizontal elevation of the standards of the nation, immediate and perceptible, by the simple device of new laws. This is never been the case. In human existence. Progress is slow and the result of a long and arduous process of selfdiscipline. Is not conferred upon the people. It comes from the people. In a republic, the law reflects rather than makes the standard of conduct in the state of Public Opinion. Real reform does not begin with the law. It ends with the law. The attempt to dragoon the body when the need is to convince the soul will only end in revolt. Under the attempt to perform the impossible there sets a general disintegration. When legislation fails, those who look upon it as a sovereign remedy sibley cry out for more legislation. A sound and wise statement ship which recognizes an attempt to abide by its limitations will undoubtedly find itself displaced by that type of public admission who promises much, talks much, legislatures much, expects much but accomplishes little. The deliberate and sound judgment of the country is likely to find it has been superseded by a popular whim. The independence of the legislature is broken down. Enforcement of the law becomes uncertain. The course fails in their function of speedy and accurate justice. Their judgments are questioned and their independence is threatened. The law changed and changeable slight provocation, loses its sanctity and its authority. A continuation of the condition opens the road to chaos. It is time to supplement the appeal to law, which is limited, with an appeal to the spirit of the people. Which is unlimited. Some and settlements disturbed, but they are temporary. Some fatuous elements exist but they are small. No assessment of the material conditions of americans can warned anything but the highest courage and the deepest faith. No reliance upon the National Character has ever been betrayed. Know survey which goes below the surface can fail to discover a solid and substantial foundation for satisfaction. But our countrymen must remember that they have and can have no dependents, save themselves. Our laws are there laws. It is for them to enforce, support and obey. It is in this, they fail there are none who can succeed. The sanctity of duly constituted tribunals must be maintained, undivided allegiance to Public Authority must be required. With a citizenship that voluntarily establishes the cause of america is secure. Without that, all else is of little faith. [ applause ] we will now move toward final panel of the comforts. Session number seven. Titled out rushmore and the presidency. Our moderator this afternoon is matthew spalding. Dr. Spalding is the kirby professional in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College and the dean of hillsdales graduate school of government in washington, d. C. Dr. Spalding is the author of numerous books including the best selling book, we still hold these truths, rediscovering our principles, reclaiming our future. Please join me in welcoming dr. Spalding and our panelists to the stage. Thank you all. Good afternoon. K you all. I want to begin by thanking amity, the great work of the Coolidge Foundation, for what theyre doing, restoring coolidges thank you, good afternoon. I want to begin by thanking amity and the great work of the Coolidge Foundation for what they are doing. Restoring coolidges standing but also spreading and teaching his message. Our panel today, we call it the mt. Rushmore panel, and that is not just because of our chiseled good looks and grand features. But as an attempt to assess coolidges larger president ial legacy. Coolidge spoke at the dedication ceremony at mt. Rushmore in the summer of 1927 when that work was just beginning to take shape. There he spoke briefly about the presence to be inscribed in the memorial. Washington, the former disciple of ordered liberty, now ranked by any moral greatness. Jefferson, whose wisdom insured the government should be entrusted to the administration of the people. Lincoln, who demonstrated the permanency of our union and extended the principle of freedom to all the inhabitants of our land. Roosevelt, who saw the principles for which these three men stood might still be more firmly established. Future american coolidge will know that the figure of these president s has been placed there because by following the truth they built for eternity. The fundamental principles which they represent have been brought into the very being of our country. The question is, where does Calvin Coolidge fit in our president ial pantheon . I want to begin briefly by suggesting we consider a higher standard. There was a bit of a coolidge revival back in the 1980s, thomas silver, a colleague of mine and dr. Haywards, argued at the time in his book how such reassessment of coolidge is difficult given the damaging attacks made by partisan critics of his time which thereafter became a key narrative in the dominant new deal for historians. Read the accounts of alan evans. Above all arthur ginger jr. And youll see this pathology. Part of the official narrative of modern liberalism passed down to historians who repeat the same stories. More generally are assessment of president ial greatness is shaded by modern Political Science success the displays the old model of politics with a modern theory of leadership. First laid out by the progressive archetype, our only professional academic to be president , Woodrow Wilson. We are today ruled more by expertise and follow models of bureaucratic decisionmaking and live under the administration of politics. Rather than look to the deliberation and judgment, prudence and political wisdom of statesmanship. And yet despite the modern historians and academic theorists strikes me just as it should strike any close reader in any student of actual history, the coolidge has more in common with washington and lincoln than any other modern president. When reagan, famously placed jeffersons portrait in the cabinet room with that of Calvin Coolidge, spurring that early revival, the 30th president , i think it was not a displacement of jefferson as much as a recognition that coolidge may well be the best representative of the 20th century jeffersonian is him. That is because coolidge, unlike the dominant progresses of his day, or are day for that matter, understood deeply the trans historical open purposes of the american regime. Especially as expressed in the declaration of independence. After lincoln, who was following washington and jefferson, coolidge was the most significant and substantive interpreter of those concepts. The progressive politics should be determined by the changing times and its progress. And the need for progressive leadership. Coolidge thought that things the spirit would come first. And the no advance or progress could be made beyond fundamental truths in the declaration. His claim to those things, he famously said, are all material prosperity will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. Into the politics of prudence and the necessity of statesmanship. But there can be no statesmanship without statesman. While circumstances often reveal greatness, circumstances do not determine the virtue. Neither do historians. Or political scientists. Thanks be to god. While circumstances often reveal that excuse me, any assessment of Calvin Coolidge requires a higher standard of statesmanship. This, despite the fact that just before speaking at mt. Rushmore, coolidge announced he would not run for reelection in 1928. , it is a great advantage of a president and a major source of safety to the country for him to know that he is not a great man. That said, what is coolidges legacy . We have a panel for you to assess this. I am mostly a historian of washington and lincoln in the early american presidency. The first speaker today is craig furman, who has studied many president s as writers and is the author and chief, where he writes about coolidge as one of americas best writer president s. Thank you, matthew and thank you all for coming out. There a lot of things you could be doing this afternoon so its nice youre spending with us and talking about president s. Today i want to celebrate coolidges talent legacy as a president ial writer. Both of been overlooked. Forget this silent cal nonsense. He built his career not by being quiet by being loud. Especially between the covers of two huge important books. Books the cleverly capitalized on his new forms of celebrity and commerce. There are two main categories. The Campaign Book which helps them get to the white house and the legacy book which helps him reflect on and cash in on time there. Coolidge wrote an alltime example. Have faith in massachusetts appeared in 1919 clicking many of his speeches as governor. Coolidge took each speech seriously. His wife who herself was a superb and underrated writer remember him writing the speeches and pencil so he could revise them again and again. None of them was ever wholly satisfactory to him at the time as grace for. Afterwards he would read one and say, that was a pretty good speech after all. This labor produced a deceptively simple style. Short sentences. Elementary structures and a gift for aphorism that another new england writer, benjamin franklin, wouldve liked. But prose is only part of the books success. It also needs marketing, distribution, buzz and behind the scenes have received expert help. A famous editor chose the title with a book called base estate orations, which was another option. A businessman used his industry context to secure the paper for a speedy reprint just before the 1920 republican convention. This era saw the rise of advertising shops and Public Relation firms and experts from both professions pushed coolidges book in the National Media and the convention floor. One was a delegate from oregon who nominated coolidge for the vice presidency. I knew the man who wrote the speeches was a patriot, the delegate told reporters after the fact. Coolidges book was his campaign and his campaign was his book. Once he became president , coolidge became a true celebrity. This era also saw the rise of a new kind of National Star thinks to radio and magazines and movie theaters. One newspaper introduced coolidge to the National Audience like this. The governor looks like a typical yankee of the movies. Consumers wanted to glimpse the personalities and personal lives there celebrities. To know not just what they had accomplished what brand of cigarettes they smoked. One reason coolidge was so popular as a politician was that he could appeal to both forms of celebrity at the same time. He came from authentic vermont farmers stock, but he was also happy to pose on that farm for photographers. Coolidge was also a writer. Still, though he had less time for in his president. During his second term the New York Times declared him the most literary man whose occupy the white house since 1865. Coolidge saw the article he wrote a personal letter to the correspondent because it meant so much to him because he was somebody who really cared a lot about his writing. Lines like that created these expectations that were huge for his president ial memoirs which appeared in 1929. The book began as a series of essays in cosmopolitan which was a general interest magazine at the time, his own story, blair the april cover and the first essay gave readers the personal insights they craved from celebrities. Especially his account of his teenage son who died of an infection of the family lived in the house. Coolidges accounts were not just personal but brutally honest. Im going to redo some lines. In his suffering, he wrote, my son, he was asking me to make him well. I could not. The most powerful man in the world admitted that in this moment he felt powerless. Even years later he remained lacerated and ensure. , if i got been president , he wouldve not appraise the blister. I do not know why such a price has been exacted from applying the white house. It cost a great deal to be resident. On the morning that issue went on sale, grace when early to buy it and its a good thing because by the end of the day, the issue had essentially disappeared nationwide. Even though cosmopolitan had printed hundreds of thousands of extra copies. Scalpers were selling copies for one dollar apiece. Cosmopolitan received requests for additional inventory from 2000 cities. Calvin coolidge noted Publishers Weekly has received more publicity in one day than the author George Bernard shot received in three years. Coolidges autobiography became a massive bestseller made him quite wealthy. Is also remarkably brief and honest for a political memoir. Perhaps others might benefit from his example. Taken together his books prove that he was a wonderful writer, careful reader and celebrity. Today its easy to miss each of those qualities in him but its also worth asking what qualities are the most then and now . After all in washington we have plenty of celebrities. Do we have enough writers and readers . [ applause ] thank you, craig. Next speaker is dr. Hayward. Is a resident scholar at uc berkeleys government studies program. He is actually an authority on many president s. But he is the author of what i consider to be the best bargain fee of Ronald Reagan. Twovolume biography and the general title of the age of reagan which i think competes with slush injures age of roosevelt as a monumental history of a very important president. That was the idea, thanks. Leave it to amity to come up with something as provocatives is proposing Calvin Coolidge for mt. Rushmore. Exactly. Im going to try to get them in there. But if you think, have the receipts from this, if you go back to when Ronald Reagan put Calvin Coolidges picture up in the cabinet room taking down Thomas Jeffersons picture, the outrage in the media it was deafening. It would refund now to say, yeah, next thing to be to put them on mt. Rushmore. More fun times to be had with that idea. But i think hes halfway there. And im going to try to get him the rest of the way. It does require a different standard for evaluating our statesman. There has been a rise in his reputation, matt mentioned a couple key figures like tom silver. Paul johnson got a lot of the story right in modern times. Of course culminating amity and speculation of course. When i was in college around the time of the war, i think my contemporary history professor going through the depression set up Calvin Coolidge, this is all he said Calvin Coolidge was, if you took the Washington Monument and dug a commensurate hole in the ground that would be a fitting monument for Calvin Coolidges contributions to america. No argument or specifics. Nothing to substantiate this view. There were giggles from the students and i sat back and thought, my professor saying that, surely coolidge is probably an interesting guy. The opposite must surely be true. That is usually safe guide for a lot of college professors. Right . And then greg said something important, he has that reputation of silent cal. To make an important point, he was not silent at all. The historians in the superficial approaches they love to treat his sort of tacit nature that legendary and it makes for fun reading. As a secondary reason for attaching that label to him, some of it came to sight in some of the reading that matthew did of the 1924 address to the Bar Association, keep in mind coolidge was the last president to write his own speeches. By the way, the entire address, read it today and it is i think a brilliant analysis of what today we call Administrative State and what can possibly work, why cant give us Good Government or effective government. Although he doesnt use the terms we use today, but taken as a whole he is contesting all the premises of Woodrow Wilson in the early administered state before that term came into current use. I always thought later on the reason that historians dislike him and want to call him silent cal is they hope you would ignore what he said because if you read it you might be persuaded by it. Which i think is definitely the case. The excerpts that matthew shared with us seem so compelling a century later. Matt suggested we need a new standard. And matt raised the problems we do it now. If you think about the president s who topple the rankings the, periodically, i leave washington aside for various reasons, its always lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, lately Ronald Reagan makes the top tier for some historians. Is a close second tier usually has eisenhower, kennedy, truman, and perhaps Andrew Jackson and theodore roosevelt. All those have something in common that matt laid out. Also been a little further. Several of them covered at times of acute crisis. Usually wore a Foreign Policy crisis or domestic policy crisis. And there are people who contribute to changing the institution of the presidency itself. B jackson and theodore roosevelt. So, this makes perfect sense for conventional history and drama. If you like great crises, if you like to say the person who did things. My opinion is that Woodrow Wilson was largely a disaster, his legacy was a disaster and Franklin Roosevelt did everything wrong. We still see them as great president s because they were on the scene for all of this and they think they mastered it or we got through. Ranked them very highly. And i think that is the wrong way to go about it. The point is, coolidge had the misfortune from the conventional point of view of governing during quiet times. Although even that is not quite right. I think john cochran in the last panel made a very good point about how coolidge did not get in the way. There could be five, 10, or 100 good books written about how politicians and regulators will see something fair in the trade happening and try to get in front of the trade and just screw it all up. I will give you a couple of examples for the young people in the audience. We could have had cell phones at least 15 years earlier than we got them, but federal government regulations that prevented the market from emerging. And my favorite story that almost no one knows, and if you go to the late 70s, that is about halfway between today and the age of coolidge. In the fax machine was starting to be commercialized. It was slow, expensive, and clunky. But you could see it was going to change the nature of the way officers work, put couriers out of work. The post office shows up at the federal Communications Commission and says you know, in the law we have a monopoly on the transmission of all class mail, and these fax machines are going to be transmitting mail. Therefore you should restrict fax machines to be only installed in post offices, so that to send a fax you would have to go to the post office to send it and someone on the other end would have to go to the post office to pick it up. Fortunately, even in the late 70s which was very regulation happy, the fcc said to the post office thats a nice theory, ghost pound sand. You can imagine what would happen if the fcc said youre right, im sorry, you cannot self fax machines commercially. You could see what would happen to the rollout of that technology. The final irony is the College Students saying what is a fax machine . Obsolete, right . That is the mentality of government, going on and on with those examples. With ai and biotechnology, all sorts of problems on how people want to get into control that. I just read yesterday that there is a world government conference going on right now. The same people in the World Economic forums. And there was kyle schwab saying we need to have world and for solutions that govern artificial intelligence. There we go. So, the point is, the restraint of coolidge which has been commented on several times counts as an achievement of its own, and that is of high statesmanship, i think. It wont ever get treated fairly by the historians because it does not have the drama of the crisis, it does not have the drama of some dramatic intervention that may have been counterproductive. So we had some great quotes from that Bar Association address. The point is that if we think instead about what we want in our statesman, what qualities of character, what depth of insight about our constitution and how our society works. We would say we want more people like coolidge. Matt suggested this. I would put it this way. Coolidge was the last four president s in the model of the founders. Every other president since and has been in the Teddy Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson mold of being an activist. 1 degree or another, in both parties. Coolidge was the last of the statesman who wouldve fit comfortably alongside jefferson and madison and so forth. The point is we could use more president s today with thats position. If we were oriented to seeking that out, i think the case for coolidges what i call small arm republican greatness means he would be the person who would go up first on the new Mount Rushmore of modern president s. Thanks. Are cleanup better this afternoon is cal thomas. He is an author and syndicated columnist and has written and written and written many a column, books i better keep at it until somebody reads them. And he is a man of great wisdom and observation about americans real life. He is going to share his thoughts this afternoon. In the words of ross perots running mate, admiral stockdale, why am i here . Younger people will have to Google Ross Perot and admiral stockdale. Well, im here because of a family relationship. My grandfather and Grace Coolidge were first cousins. I met her at her northampton home when i was 14. But i did not know any better. So i was more interested in the elevator in her house and the buick in her garage, sadly. But she was a wonderful and beautifully named woman, full of grace. I am named after the coolidges two sons. And i remember my mother said she had gone to john and florences wedding. I remember because she kept a piece of the wedding cake in our freezer for years, along with a frozen hamburger and chicken. I said mom, i think this has been in here long enough. It needs to be deeded to the smithsonian. So that is my relationship with the coolidge family. My grandfather told me a great story. They used a double date years and years ago, and when he became president my grandfather went to visit the president in the oval office and he said coolidge took a nap. And after he woke up he looked at my grandfather and said thanks for the visit, arthur. They never exchanged words. The problem with going last is that a lot of people have already quoted some of the things that i was going to quote, but just in case some of you werent paying attention im going to plow forward. In 1995 i wrote this column after a visit to this library of congress, the other building , by the great and unfortunately late british historian paul johnson, who was mentioned earlier. His speech was called Calvin Coolidge and the last arcadia. The visit was timely, coming as it did in the heat of the war between the Clinton Administration and the Republican Congress over whether and how to balance the budget. My, how ancient that seems today. We have too much legislation by clamor, bite tumult, and by pressure. In normal times, coolidge believed, minimal government must be the norm. He spoke of restoring lincolns principles by instancing on government of the people, for, and by the people. The chief task before us, he said, is to repossess the people of their government and their property. Now you can see why Ronald Reagan love them so much. One of reagans great lines, upon many others, is the only proof of eternal life in washington is the government program. I like to say that it is easier to kill a vampire than a government program, but the analogy is a good one. Because both suck the lifeblood out of their hosts. You see, what i make for an intellectual depth i try to cover up with humor. Property and profit, coolidge believed, were keys to national prosperity. When government attacks such things, it weakens the nation and government itself. Dont expect to build up the week by pulling down the strong, he said in his 1914 inaugural address as president of the massachusetts state senate. Oh, if that philosophy were only embrace today in our age of envy, greed, and entitlement. It remains a powerful rebuke to the current welfare state which believes in punishing the rich buy ever higher taxation in order to subsidize the poor and thus perpetuate then in their poverty. The normal must take care of themselves, coolidge believed. What is normal today . Selfgovernment means self support. Ultimately Property Rights and personal rights are the same thing. This reveals no civilized people and there is not a highly educated class and large aggregation of wealth. Large profits mean large payrolls. It was essential, coolidge believed, to judge political morality and not by its intentions, but by its effects. By that standard, the welfare state and Big Government are dismal failures. In his 1925 inaugural address as president , coolidge said economy is idealism in its most practical form. Coolidge held the line against encroaching government while they expanded nearly everywhere else. Of those who came to power at the same time as coolidge, paul johnson said all the most notable were dedicated to expanding the role of the state. Mussolini, supreme in italy since 1922, put it bluntly. Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Stalin, in power from 1924, began his great series of of your plans for the entire country. From turkey and china to saudi arabia, said mr. Johnson, all of them to government into the corners of the countries so that it never before penetrated. Even france and belgium were rampant interventionists. To those who slightly coolidge era as an early version of looking out for number one, paul johnson has a rebuke. This new material advance was not as philistine as the popular historiography of the 1920s has it. Middleclass intellectuals are little too inclined against poor people inquiring for the first time material possessions, and especially luxuries. Of the kind they themselves have always taken for granted. In a democratic and self improving society like the United States, when more money becomes available the First Priority for both local governments and for families is to spend it on more and better education. That is certainly what happened in the 1920s. Total education spending in the United States rose fourfold. Illiteracy fell from 7. 7 to 4 . Book club started. Americans voted for the top greatest men in history. They included shakespeare, longfellow, tennyson, and dickens, who are now, of course, expunged from any english and literature programs in our socalled institutions of higher learning. More institutions, i would argue, that higher learning. Coolidges highest rebuke to modern times with this. He was not exactly popular but he was hugely respected. I would disagree, i think he was highly popular, as others have pointed out. In our day where popularity is everything and respect is an Aretha Franklin song. Thank you. America could do a lot worse to recall the wisdom of Calvin Coolidge, and politicians of all stripes might consider this to the. But the things i never say never got me in trouble. We are going to have a little discussion here before we go over to you. You obviously have some thoughts based on our comments, as well. But i want to begin by picking up on something Stephen Edward mentioned, the top president s that usually come out in the listing, the rankings. The one outlier that he both mentioned but also we did not fully address was actually reagan. Which is to say, when we commented that, all the modern president s past coolidge really are themselves progressives, or at least are subject to the modern progressive view of how we look at politics. Does that include reagan . How do we assess that . Reagan wrote a lot of his own things. How do we assess this . Is there anything there we can work with . At some point the question is can we have another Calvin Coolidge president in the modern era . How would you assess that . Yeah, on one hand i want to say how much time we got . That would be the wrong way to start out. Exactly. He was the closest to it. His models were coolidge and eisenhower. But i would put them in the second ranking. Its not an accident, i think, that the initial evaluations of coolidge in the 50s and eisenhower during his presidency and after were very similar. Didnt talk very much, unimaginative. Eisenhowers reputation has risen in many of the similar ways as coolidge. Certain about selfrestraint. Reagan is a little tricky, because we call him the great communicator. He was not silent. He was not shy. He was a very gregarious guy. But i think partly that was the necessity of the matter. He understood that we live in a time of these various cold war crises. The economy was in crisis when he came in the office. That requires, unfortunately, the amount of that president ial leadership that you had at. You develop it. That is doubtful character when laid next to the founders understanding of how the presidency ought to be conceived and operated. It might be an essential quality of prudence. Yeah, thats right. Reagans initial model was fdr. Yeah, right. Although Marty Anderson once said in my long years of reagan i never once heard him approve any specific new deal policy. He liked fdr style. And theres something to be said for that. I will just jump in here to say first of all, with reagan we talked about executive power. We cannot forget foreignpolicy. That reagan had a very expansionist view of the president s role in that realm. The other thing that is so interesting to me, i always try to bring it back to president s as writers. And wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, two president s who did more than anybody to start this modern presidency executive power. You can see it in the writing. They boast two good books. His first book was about the naval war of 1812. And in that book you will not find a more ambivalent view of heroism, if you look at treatment of all the war of 1812 in the naval conflicts. It is not that perry was some great leader was able to motivate his shoulders. He had more cannons. And roosevelt did all the research. On american ships they can point more cannons in the same direction to create a better broadside. It was a very lit logistical book that talked about research. By the time Teddy Roosevelt got close to becoming a hero himself his books were quite bad, because all he wanted to talk about was how great people had changed history, and not how many cannons there were. But who is giving the speech is on the ships themselves. The first book is quite good but has a very pragmatic view. Even these president s and their writing, the closer they get the power, the more they want to talk about how they help. If an individual is about the president , did you know that individuals in the presidency can change the world . What is cool about coolidge is that even though he got closer to power he never flipped that switch and have a consistent view about the individual and his role in power. At that point Teddy Roosevelt could not go on to spend his Summer Reading herbert croley. So he had not gone insane yet. When i read his comments at Mount Rushmore i had to say his briefest comment was about Teddy Roosevelt. And i wonder whether he already thought at times that Teddy Roosevelt does not deserve to be up there. Because of some of his more progressive insanities. If coolidge is to go there, i would vote that he replaced teddy. Other thoughts in this direction . The model of coolidge as a modern president. You all kind of touched on this in a way. He was a president in times of peace, which unfortunately shades how he was looked at. It truly is unfortunate, right . The model of what a small arm republican president should be within a Constitutional Government at the federal level as opposed to his governorship, in which she was much more active strikes me is the correct model. Is it lost . Yeah, probably. Some of the mentioned earlier today that coolidge vetoed a couple of farm subsidy bills. Then somebody asked a pretty good question about the volatility of the farm economy being a factor. And coolidge in his veto messages, its worth going back and reading them. He thinks they are bad policy. The last thing he says is oh, by the way, i think these bills are unconstitutional. What a quaint idea. The contract with modern times since signing the Mccain Feingold bill in 2003, he says in his comments that i think this bill is unconstitutional but that is the subject for the Supreme Court to decide. And i thought, you know, if lincoln was his tutor he was that you flunk. Coolidge wouldve said the same thing. Let me take a crack at this. I was just thinking that i think the real difference between coolidge and modern republican president s is that he consistently stuck with his principles. At every level of his public life, especially in the presidency. Modern republicans are intimated by the media, by some of the business that the democrats continually promote about republicans only care about the rich, you saw when paul ryan came up with a plan to reform Social Security and medicare the left came up with an ad that showed paul ryan pushing granny in a wheelchair over a cliff. And republicans run in fear. Reagan, as great as he was, did preside over tax increases. Bush 41 in his inaugural address reached out the hand of friendship to speaker jim wright, who promptly cut it off and led bush to violate his read my lips no new taxes pledge. And bush said he made the deal because they promised to cut spending. If i were president , god help us all, i would say no, you go first. Because that is where the problem is. Its not in the revenue, its in the spending, as was pointed out on several other panels. But when you have an era of envy, greed, and entitlement, as opposed to coolidges philosophy of inspiration followed by elevation followed by perspiration, its pretty tough to defeat that. If you look at last years open enrollment on medicare supplements. I live in florida now, a lot of retired people there. Im not. But anyway. Every ad had three words in it. Every single one. Benefits, free, and entitled. The unholy trinity of the second of progresses. If you sell out long enough, you are going to addict people to the government, envy of other peoples wealth, complete reliance on things outside of yourself, which was and into the be to Calvin Coolidge. I think that is why he was so successful and his principles actually work in promoting some of the greatest prosperity this country has ever seen. But we forget the past. I like to say that the only politicians with convictions in washington now are in prison. We do forget history, we will be doomed to repeat it. Because the principal never change. Cal, you remind me of stan evanss great line. It is a good thing that republicans are prolife since they spend so much time in the fetal position. I like that one. Having said that, im going to push back against steve a little bit. I think we can conclude that its over. I think that would be the wrong lesson here. Its one thing to say that Calvin Coolidge today, just like abe lincoln today or washington today might well not get elected, or get a nomination, or be successful. But it actually is precisely the qualities that i value most in coolidge, washington, and lincoln, which is, to say, the predictable qualities of the statement, that we need most. That will require certain amounts of political accommodations. To begin a movement to uncover the constitutionalism of Calvin Coolidge. You are absolutely right, he is the model in the modern era. Its a deeper understanding of the political questions that i think we have gone awry on. It seems to me that there a lot of people, a lot of americans, a lot of voters who are desperately looking around for an alternative to the modern leadership we are getting from both political parties, that makes an opening for someone of that statesmanship like quality. I dont think i was quite clear. I dont think its over, either. What i is it would require a person of rare insight and talent. Combining the insight of coolidge and the talent of reagan to make a case for a restoration constitutionalism. That is a hard thing to do. I think it is necessary. But i never think the unfolding of history is reversible. You dont see many people like that around. Again, circumstances. I dont want to get off on this because it takes a sideways, but reagan on taxes. Quite right, he instituted tax increases. But he understands that not all taxes are created equal. He was rock solid in income tax increases. Then he would give on excise taxes and other things. He would then later say that his biggest mistake was that 82 tax deal which shouldve been a signal to george h. W. Bush to not fall down that same trap. We have about 20 minutes left to take some questions from the audience. I am told there are some microphone somewhere, and if you raise a hand we would like to have her here. Please. Hi, my name is audrey and i am from san francisco, california. The question is for mr. Cal thomas. You mentioned the Great Success of Calvin Coolidges education reform. At our current Education System is decidedly lacking. How would you suggest that we combine both coolidges prudence and thriftiness with money with his Great Success with the Education Programs . This is your fifth question, your next one is free. I would employ two words. School choice. I think by last count, 26 states now has some form of school choice. Jeb bush, the former governor of florida, was a leader in this. The unions, of course, are against it. Because this is how you train a new secular humanist Big Government. Contacts, envy, we are all racist, and all this other business in our government schools. I dont call them Public Schools because they dont serve the public. They are government schools. Most of them are indoctrination centers. The history books are all written in a way that is endemic of the secular progressive left. To me it is always amusing that some of my friends on the left who are prochoice when it comes to abortion are anti choice for those fortunate enough to have been born as to where they are educated. I think compensation works for everything. The post office, fedex, u. P. S. , or anything else. But this is the last monopoly in america. So many other monopolies, at t, many others, have been broken up to the public benefit, i would argue. But Public Education is the last monopoly left over from the dewey era. We have gotten rid of any moral foundation as the readers talk for years in our Public Schools. Respect for parents, love of country, all these things. Now we have the looting of all sorts of flags. We have the black National Anthem at the super bowl. We are all parts of tribes now. We are hyphenated americans. This is not healthy for a nation that is going to move into the type of values that coolidge had. Thank you. Hello, my name is caleb, and i am from south carolina. My question is for dr. Hayward regarding essentially the little regulation of business. Like free market. I was wondering, to what extent does the exportation of the consumer, perhaps their predatory pricing or planned obsolescence, what role does that play within the regulation business . Oh, my goodness, that would be signed up for the course i dont teach on antitrust issues. Yeah, so, all right. Lets see if i can sort this out. I was unprepared to think about this today. Where you have genuine monopolies, even they tend to not endure that long. It turns out if you go back to the trust, which really started the antitrust enthusiasms of the late 19th to 20th centuries, a lot of them before you had robust antitrust laws starting in the wilson years, a lot of them tended to fall apart a lot of time. It can be very effective in raising prices and limiting output in the short run, but they are always falling apart and lacking discipline. You found that was sugar trusts and steel. When you consolidate all of these steel companies, that was done in 1911, that is a different matter. It has been a huge revolution, but we still do block airline murders. What it looks like youd lock up one airport for just one airline and they would have no price competition. We still do that. And that is probably reasonable. But i think as a general matter, and as i say, this is a long and intricate subject that i have not studied closely for quite a while. Generally the idea of consumer exploitation is exaggerated and overestimated most of the time. Not always, but most of the time. And free competition is the best way to break that down. Again, as a general principle. That is my short, on the spot version of it. You just get the greatest Cross Section of students here. Hi there, my name is camden dempsey. Im from colorado. You talk about how we need principal leaders to reflect the values of coolidge, but when we have such an acidic media that no matter what side of the aisle you are on, the media just trashes you for whatever values you do have. How do we create a new environment where we can have politicians who are moderate or who are at least able to stand on their values and stand on their principles and still be elected, and not just dissolve into this partisanship that has been wrecking the country for the past few years. This is why i have always favored term limits. You need to recycle congress and trash for the same reason. Both left in one place begin to emit a foul smell. You have people like Patrick Leahy of vermont who is bragging before they left, ive been in this town 40 years. Thats the problem, isnt it . Ill tell you my favorite story on that. My friend, george mcgovern, the 1972 democratic nomination. He was a good friend. A world war ii bomber pilot. Not a pilot, a tailgunner. And he lost in the reagan landslide of 1980 and has not done anything but Public Service since he came back from world war ii. Decided to do something totally different. He went up to connecticut and bought an in and tried to run it. After a few years he went bankrupt. A wall street journal reporter called him up and want to know what happened. He said gee, if i dont how difficult it was to run a business, i might have voted differently in the senate. There you have it. You have to get these people out. The founders never intended this to be a career. You are farmers, lawyers, business people. You come to washington and do Public Service, not selfservice. It was not a career. You did not get all of these benefits. Two terms and you get a salary for life, or you get a Transition Office with free postage and all kinds of other perks. My mother said dont put out a saucer of milk for the stray cat or youll never get rid of it. You have more than a saucer of milk in this town. They come and they never want to leave. And that is the problem. You solve that problem, you saw a lot of other problems. The other thing i would say, to speak directly to your question, that you can just go around the media. What elevated coolidge to the National Profile was the strike and his telegram that responded to the strike. The telegram was so short but so wellwritten that it just got reprinted and sold. The way the media has evolved, if you are really good communicator you can find a way to get around that. Most journalists are writers. There is nothing writers love more than writers. If you can write well and communicate well you can, at least for a time, get the media on your side. I think it is one reason coolidge was so effective. One of the problems with that, if i could just interject, is that more of the people now tune into those channels and read those newspapers that reinforce what they already believe. Nobody talks to each other in this town anymore. There are no social gatherings for republicans and democrats. If you are seen with somebody and the other party, somebody will take a picture on their cell phone, put it on snapchatted or instagram or something, and accuse you of being a compromiser. So the whole media atmosphere is completely different than in coolidges era where there were many newspapers of different points of view instead of what we have now. I always like to say i read two rings every day. My bible and the New York Times. So i know what each side is doing. Quickly, i think there is an art to handling the media. There been huge changes in the media, most of them bad. I cant remember if coolidge ever said anything pithy about the news media. He probably did. But i think he wouldve been brilliant at twitter. And he might have liked it. Too many characters. Right. I think Ronald Reagan would have enjoyed twitter. Without getting into the whole media landscape, there are some examples of president s who understood how to handle the media. Reagan had an excellent idea. Quit talking to the National Media, make the president available to talk to the local tv affiliates in fort wayne, indiana. A lot of work goes and all that, but go around the local media may not be very knowledgeable, but the news course is going to be more sensible and respectful than the brain hounds of the White House Press room. The second is, the really good ones knew how to handle the media and deflect them. Eisenhower by being deliberately incoherent. Kennedy with witt. And i think coolidge doing that kind of press conference, i think it wouldve been good at that. My favorite reagan moment was when Sam Donaldson stands up in 92. Sweet man, by the way. But he is all in reagans face saying you criticize the mistakes of the past and democrats for our big deficits. You take any of the blame for the growing deficit . And reagan nods his head and says yes, i do, because for a long time i was a democrat. But donaldson told me, i asked about that. That guy had many humiliations at the hands of Ronald Reagan, but that was the biggest one. It takes some craftiness to know how to do that, and a lot of politicians just dont think about that and practice it and think it through. I will make a slightly contrarian point, which is that i need more politics, not less politics. And i think perhaps one of the things we should be looking at more is less about coolidges presidency and more about his governorship. Which is to say that what strikes me that we need today, which coolidge understood at the federal level, and at the state level including over education, which is a constitutional responsibility of governors and state legislatures, where you can actually take over Civic Education and actually take over colleges and universities in your university system. That strikes me as what Calvin Coolidge would do even his constitutional responsibilities. And you redefine the very media environment. That strikes me is the way to go. That is what a statesman would think about it. And i think we are to nationally focused. The point of the media would go right along with that. We need more aggressive governors. And i think Calvin Coolidge would be one. We have some brewing today, which means there is potentially reliable Calvin Coolidge like states ship. You have mentioned the evolution of the presidency. What role as the primary system played in that, especially today . And how do we fix that . Who was that for, me . I mean, i could. The primary system goes back 100 years ago but did not really take off until the 1972 cycle. If you dont know this, Hubert Humphrey got the 1968 democratic nomination without entering a single primary. They still had the party back rooms and caucuses and so forth. It is worth mentioning, how did coolidge and of being selected as Vice President . He was actually among the six ranked candidates that the convention was actually considering in the Old Fashioned smoke showroom way. He was already thought of as a person of National Prominence for reasons already mentioned. You know, if you make a time machine and drop coolidge in today, maybe he doesnt have the ordinary sense that we now demand of our president ial candidates, which is a mixed bag at best. But yeah, that is a problem. Although on the other hand, i would like to say that if we had the old system we probably would not of gotten Ronald Reagan as president. Because Party Establishment is not like him and did not want him in 1980. And it was only because he could win the new system where the primary determinant. By the way, donald trump would never have gotten the nomination in 2016 if it was up to the party bosses. Right . Im not quite sure what i make about it at the end of the day. My own sentiment is that i would like to go back to some mixed system where you have some party bosses. The democrats are superdelegates from the 80s. They kind of abandoned all that under pressure. But i think Something Like that, i both parties ought to have it. You want to add that . I picked up on the word charisma that modern leaders have to have. Who better examples that can joe biden and Kamala Harris . Very good. Very good. I thought joe biden campaigning from his basement was a brilliant strategy for him. You need to govern that way, too. Way in the back. Im Daniel Wright from jacksonville, florida. I wanted to first of all thank you for all of you being here this afternoon enclosing the sessions. I would say, to dovetail on what has been shared in the section about making good readers, working on will you do . Model and guide for good reading. Propaganda seeks to present a part of the facts, to distort their relations and to force conclusions which could not be drawn from a complete and candid survey of all the facts. It has been observed that propaganda seeks to close the mind while education seeks to open it. This is been one of the dangers of the present day. From january 1925 till you spoke to the news association. Modeling good reading. If you are studying good reading or good writing you become better by studying those established forms. One way to go around and share it. And a good example of great reading is autobiography. What a beautiful autobiography of coolidge. It is a wonderful book and there is a story and there were he talks about franklin and how much he enjoyed reading franklin. How he would come home from school and just copy franklins writing out to kind of internalize his rhythms and see what good writing felt like. Then his dad came in and said i dont know why youre wasting your time, youre not at school right now. Its time to work on the farm. See you can see outside of it. Calvin more than his father. Yeah. Were you going to add something . Hi, my name is sophie from north carolina. I really enjoyed hearing about the values that made Calvin Coolidge and the fathers so great as stewards of our nation. But a lot of times you all talked about how those values are really becoming incompatible with our modern society and political state. So how would you propose that we as the upcoming generation of leaders integrate these core values of our most prominent founders and their successes into an increasingly modern and changing world, to bring some of those values into the world as we come in the leadership . Ill make a general comment, just as framing the answer. I think part of it is, going back to this question about good reading and white coolidge supported lincoln, we have to understand the distinction here. When we use the word values we are talking about things that i value or uvalue. What coolidge talked about with lincoln and washington talked about were things that enduring and true. Just rhetorically, there is an important distinction to make. Postmodernism and the world in which we work, there are no truths. We need to learn how to talk in that environment, and why coolidge is great to read, washington, lincoln, that they understood that. And the claim of the founding, which Calvin Coolidge, i think, is the modern. There is an enduring truth there. And there is no progress for that. First we need to completely absorb that. Because then you can make a distinction between the truth and the practical things we have to do. Where we can have accommodation and change, even progress. But holding those two things in place i think is the key to figuring out how to proceed. But remember, we have to speak differently, but we also need to know what to say. And that requires a lot of hard work. To connect it with the previous question about real reading, real learning. One of the practical problems we have these days, and i think there are decent social sciences. Attention spans are shorter. Thats one fact of the media. It turns out that what . In the 1968 tv coverage of the president ial race, the average sound bite from x and humphrey was 45 seconds long. You actually get several complete sentences. By 1988, just 20 years later, the average sound bite on the network news was eight seconds long. Just sentences. This is the precursor to twitter in some ways. The kind of dialectic, and i mean that in the socratic way that you saw in the Lincoln Douglas debate, where they argue with each other for an hour each in front of live audiences of people, several thousands of people who traveled in their wagons to hear this. Remember, none of them got to vote directly for either man in that contest. They were there because they thought it was important to take in these arguments and form Public Opinion around them. Today that is on thinkable. I dont know all the ways to break all that. I will just pick one thread for you. We are awash these days in rights and everything of all kinds. One thing we try to teach the students is understanding what has gone wrong with the promiscuous use of the idea of rights today, and how the founders thought about it, natural rights and so forth. The kind of rights the talked about the declaration of independence, they are embodied in the bill of rights. And that takes a while to really grasp and understand that. That is one task among many that i think your generation needs to be a matter of urgent study and thought and patience. The only other thing i would say is reading things in print. Take some time, slow down. There are Great Research by cognitive psychologist the reading and print helps to balance multiple perspectives. I would ask not just for reading, reading things from people who are different than you. I have very different policy from anyone else sitting up here. Go read Teddy Roosevelt speech. Go read Woodrow Wilsons first inaugural. Read in print, form your ideas and values. Two extend that point, i completely agree. Read them in their original form. If you want to read coolidge, read coolidge. If you want to read lincoln, read lincoln. Your obligation is to understand them as they understood themselves. Then we can have a discussion about what we like about them. Our country is not that old. We have a common language. Its not like youre having to read chaucer or anything like that. Take the time to do it. It will make you a better reader and a better citizen. I actually believe this, that the federalist papers are the political expression of what shakespeare is to literature. Shakespeare was hard when you first start out reading it. I remember finding the federalist papers very daunting as an undergra to have patience. But by the time you read your 10th federalist paper, you start to understand it. You dont need a class, you dont need a biography. Keep reading and youll figure it out. Let me make this one point quickly in answer to your question. Human nature never changes. Modes of transportation change, hairstyles, clothing styles, the way we live in our housing changes. But human nature never changes. That is why mr. Jefferson wrote in the Philosophical Foundation of the constitution that all are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then in the next clause he outlines the purpose of government. And to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Why is that necessary for government to do . Because as James Madison wrote, men were angels. But men are not angels, you see. So we need to be constrained from our human nature, either by within have power and presence higher than ourselves, or from without by the government acting, importantly, under god, or it becomes tyrannical. That is why i would like to announce oh, sorry. I got carried away there for a minute. Join me in thanking the panelists. Thank you for joining us. The about looks podcast takes you behind the scenes of the nonfiction publishing district with insider interviews, industry updates, and the sellers list. 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