when something is necessary, it may not be proper. it is necessary and proper in our constitution. each contains the other. a tobacco republican might say this is republican morality. that is what it is necessary to do. it would minimize or ignore necessity. it can lead to hypocrisy and pretend to be more. you pretended to be moral of front, but behind your back, you are doing something sneaky. the president says, do not be squeamish. use the power of the executive. he could become a victim of wishful thinking. necessary means necessary to the republic. it does not mean necessary to an individual in their own lives. it also includes a necessity for good government. it means it is republican in the successful. it is not perfect government. government itself as a reflection on human nature. human nature is the same. there will be no perpetual peace. we probe a few years ahead. there is no spontaneous order that will enable us to take care of ourselves or our government. it means the necessary exception to the will of law. it is the attitude with energy. limited government is not necessarily small government. small government is not necessarily one government. it is not small or big either. big government takes away yourself government. usurp your liberty. it has benevolence and good will. it can still up on you. -- can still on new -- if can steal off on you. -- up on you. it is benevolence. self-government as opposed to the other. nature. it can be for the good or bad. encroachment. the constitution is not fixed. it is open to interpretation. it is short of changing the constitution. the constitution is not to be changed except by the people. republican government is not fixed. part of the dispute in making this choice is inevitable. -- partisan dispute in making this choice is inevitable. part of the dispute is the unnecessary consequence of choices and liberty. and conservatives. the constitution is not a guarantee of good government. not a machine that runs itself. his is free to make mistakes. but they could put an end to our freedom. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. this week, this month, many are wondering. the free market people may have done well in the mid-term election, but instantaneously, we get a second thought and winning is easy. foodcandy's new rivals stuff a can aty's new rivals -- these at noon or rivals -- candy's new -- successful by their own terms? economy and let it grow. eight the progress of tide is strong. this legislation is really necessary. persistence is necessary. professionalism is necessary. master politicians are necessary as lawless change them or write them. i wanted to talk a little bit this morning about politicians that did start the progressive side. it was the 30th president, calvin coolidge. he is the subject of a new biography i am writing. simon cowell. -- silentcoolidge achieved what many long -- silent cal. his commitment to limited -- you may be as surprised to hear me mention this. we do rank or presidents like sports stars. -- our presidents like sports stars. he is there with jimmy carter. he is a taxable present. he first came into the presidency by an accident when warren g. harding died in the middle of a scandal. many people want to silence. if you have probably heard the stories about coolidge. this is another kind of republican that said that he looked as if he had been weaned on a couple -- a pickle. a lady sat next to president coolidge and had bet that she could get him to say two or more words and he toller, you lose. -- he told her, you lose. we tell ourselves that this is a new thing. most new president get a honeymoon if you are weak. here is what an editor of the magazine wrote about coolidge to welcome him into office in the summer of 1923. he said that the government has fallen into the hands of a man who is so uninspiring, so on and lighted. we wanted to compare the challenge of them to the challenge of today. it starts with the way of progress and some -- progression is some -- government and individual progressionism. president wilson was the living constitution. we have the progressive movement. the income tax became law. the first rate was 7% and they got it up to 77% in less than a decade. we got the fed at that time in .he 20's the planned to redistribute wealth. there were demonstrations in the streets. their words -- there was inflation. we had a recession in the early twenties. they demonstrated in berlin, why would they not demonstrate in boston? yet, somehow, it was stopped when coolidge was president. there was not much progressive law passed in the 20's. basically, they did put progressiveness some -- progressiveism on hold. we always do this with your breath and look at a number. unemployment was high for a moment in that recession. but it dropped fast, below 5% after several years of the recession. so, you go from 19% in the cities to below 5%. people got a ford. the rich got richer, but the rich, also, paid a greater share of the tax than the poor. they got the fairness that was described by cutting tax rates. in our modern view, this is kind of confusing. economists say that to have to pick your poison, joblessness or inflation. it was the benign twin of the evil 70 is. they were not just good, they were really good. a lot goes to calvin. what measures did he take to contribute to this outcome? he understood something that modern politicians do not, that change is not always good. and certainly from too much change is bad -- uncertainty from too much change is bad. it was better to stop a bad law than to sign a good when he wrote to his father as early as 1910. i call him the great refrain er for what he chose not to do. he was not alone in wanting to limit change. harding had an even lower rank and coolidge. if you go to his inaugural address, you will see that he focuses on what the government should do during a recession. it sounds so different from anything we might hear today and so i want to read it to you. perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages again because work just compensations but we must strive for normalcy. we must face a condition of bring -- of grim reality and start fresh. no altered system will work a miracle. any while the experiment will only add to confusion. coolidge was part of a team that fought for and won lower taxes. here, you have to include wealth. they started at the 77% rate. then, with coolidge, all the way down, you have 25%. that is better than ronald coolidge was the president that hit that home run-that is better than ronald reagan. coolidge was the president that hit that home run. they had a snowpacks in vermont. -- a snow tax in vermont. i think that coolidge had a good understanding of the sacrifice that taxation meant. at one point, he called illegalize larceny and therefore have the impetus to push his idea through. it was said that two founders conversed in bondage. -- conversed in pauses. while he was still governor of massachusetts, and got to do that. there was say strike. -- there was a strike. police were underpaid. they were poor. the station house had bedbugs and rats and the vermin chewed on the leather of their helmets. they made friends with a nice union man. but when they went on strike, there was rioting in boston. people expected the governor, calvin coolidge and the mayor to negotiate. they fire the policeman. why? not because the work rule, coolidge did it because -- foresaw what it was done, because he wanted to draw that line in the sand about organized labor, specifically about what public-sector unions can and cannot do. that resonated. they said that the progressive tide would not go any farther, that he stopped it. americans like workers but there is a limit about what we like about the organized union power. and they brought the budget from the six is down to 5.1 billion. -- down to $5.1 billion for the day -- could choose to speak about the economy, but he did not mean measuring aggregates by the economy. he meant savings by government. he came into office in 1923 and left in 1929 and when he left, his budget at $3.12 billion was lower than when he came in. this deserves -- this rehabs him. yet heard the coolidge ". it was the internet of the day. the industry was coveted by government. there was an effort to capture utility is and to involve it in the development of a hydro-power system. coolidge vetoed that and postponed it. there were other divas. that is notable because he was from vermont. he understood farmers. how did he do it? one was by not being grandiose and not minding being called dole. republicans today and democrats, no one wants to be called dole. coolidge's ability was to dull.ce bil here is what was said about calvin coolidge. the white house is extremely sensitive to the first sentence in the executive department to do something. the skill with which mr. coolidge applied a wet blanket is technically a marvelous. there has never been an equal. the statement imagines that his desire to interest the people that is useful. mr. coolidge is more sophisticated. 2nd, coolidge did what he did by refusing to be thrown into action by emergency. he was an anti-rahm emanuel. his integrity -- his integrity came with the trend of their era. there was a dramatic flood and walls of water came down. hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. he confronted the same situation. coolidge did the latter. his commerce secretary, herbert hoover -- he did not see it as the role of washington to run it all. private philanthropy should take the lead. a third feature of coolidge that enabled him to achieve what he did was that he practiced politics while. he was a career politician. the kind that we are trying to vote out these days. he knew that to get your goal, it took skill whether it was a pocket veto or behind-the-scenes work. he did his work carefully. he picked his battles. he did not have a steep learning curve because he took the years before he got to the presidency to learn his craft. he is the rare animal that is a master and uses his mastery to make government smaller. the final feature of the coolidge mask did -- coolidge method is his humility. his humility towards his office. he not only have the ability to delegate, he believed he should out of respect for the structure of the executive branch. when the time came to run for a second elected term, kind of an entitlement of a successful president, coolidge declined with an admonition that could have been written by someone else. he said that it is difficult for men in high office to avoid this. they are assured of their own greatness. you can find this in his autobiography. the chances of having wise public service is increased by a change in the presidential office after a moderately the time. -- a moderate length of time. he knew an economy was about deals between -- he cared much about the bilateral agreement. it is hard to find an attack on anyone. they felt that god had a role to play. the chief business of america is business. they give it an incomplete report because coolidge did not just say that the chief business of america is business, he said that the ideal of america is idealism. he made clear that there were areas where government could not go. coolidge said that the government of the country should never get involved in the religion of the country. he said that there was no way you could substitute the quality of law for the virtue of man. this takes us to the final question. if coolidge was a success and the 1920's did war like a real long and, -- roar like a real the depression was deep and wide. the era that caused the great depression had to be great, covering an immense amount of time. , thee 30's were bad twenties have to be that cause. -- the 1920's had to be that cause. as a footnote in history, the president must be travell laws as well. roosevelt good meant coolidge bad. you could not have it both ways. also, and i think that jim pearson is going to talk about this today and we cannot remember what they say because we speak and economic -- we speak a different economic language. it lacks the vocabulary to describe what happened in the 1920's. a recession with a cut the budget -- where they cut the budget. this was impossible. it cannot happen. a decade it that disproves the phillips curse. let's not talk about that. when unions got smaller, real wages rose. this was a time when there was so much emphasis on supply and so little on demand, it must have been fake. because of all these inconvenient truths, our social science overlooked the strength of the 1920's. that does not mean that they did not happen. they did will the government. they endorsed tariffs because it was in the platform of his party. tariffs hurt the economies. i hope he will agree that the fax suggest -- that the facts suggest that coolidge belongs on the all-star team. thank you. [applause] >> my task is to comment on these two papers. i do not know as much about federalist and calvin -- calvin coolidge. this is not in all that stands between you and the break. the next panel is jim pearson and and and the party. i can build on those two. . . >> i am very much on board the agenda. on the other hand, people should read the federalist papers there's a tension sometimes that rises up. there's a healthy tension. it is a tension that the federalist discusses and recognizes. claims the constitution resolves. one of the striking things i have been pretending to help. i've read these a few times. one of the striking things how hard headed the office is to the intention of the good republican government that a lot of the politics are about balancing tendencies that go in different directions trying with the aspect. there's no perfect way to do this. they've tried work these things out some of the rules might point in a certain direction. deviations are necessary or required because of some differences the complexity and wisdom is worth stressing at the scompevents most simple mind the tea party statement taken out of mind. the truth is, the tea party activists must not understand they wanted limited andener ge both. it is notener ge tick. you get the worst of all worlds. the spralling state that can't do effectively what government should do effectively and tries to do everything in an incompetent, not desicive way. there is a little bit too much. one has to be careful and rethink the wisdom of the founders certain things that they had not on fundamentals but on application of them. there is no meckkl solution. my second other point i'll lean a little more against the trust of her talk the other temptation we need to resist is a certain amount of nostalgia of the past or that everything was great until it went off in a certain year in is the 12 or 1968. or 1901 or 1896, even. one does have to be a little bit hard headed about what the alternatives were at the time or what they were going to be in some respect the abandonment of blacks in the south is not a key issue we like to discuss. that had something to do with the sense that simple conservatism wasn't a solution to the problems of the day. not as if it was a wonderfully stable free market william jennings did get 46% of the vote as president. it wasn't as if it was a great con sen sister. an attempt to take these forces and try to reshape them. there was a lot of the theory behind it. a lot of bad practice. under willson, i would say. one shouldn't over do how wonderful things were. i recall there was a bad recession. threatening almost to the system in the u.s. before the progressives were in charge of much. >> on the other hand, just to be a little bit of a skunk he was impressive. he made it possible that he would get in and do some of the things he did. we did have more in 1930. we did have the fed policy i believe it was under coolage he signed beyond treaty and played some part there bad policies that brought about the great depression. i would wanch a little bit against progressive nostalgia for a certain era. they are certainlyly in the 20's or more moderately 19 2-1952 were not terrible years. we came out some what clear to it. in truth it needs to be fought. they were healthy and unhealthy aspects of it. it is not forning. some how, the idea of progress is not a particular idea. the progressive characters, the election that happened on tuesday was a very big deal no first-term elected president has ever had the reputeation that president obama and the democratic party had last tuesday. it wasn't much about the issue. for whatever reason, president obama has decent approval rating. the states where the numbers have fallen, especially the midwest were a disaster. the reversal and the depth. there's no katrina or no war in iraq we are not ultimately about underlying policies the character was very ideas based. limiting our system and finding new policies. the effective government is an unusual thing it is these ideas the task is for these ideas to be translated the lessons of the founders and later successful presidents, including reagan are deeper in the american political sikee than one would expense. turns out americans are in term was that. it turned out there was not just a healthy resist tans but a rezillyens. all the more important to go back and think through the list of founders. do it in a clear eyed way without too much of the view of history or too much nose tall gaw or wishful thing. [applause] >> we are running a little behind. i figured we probably would. >> would you like to answer some questions. please speak into the microphone. >> i didn't say anything about the 19th century. bill thinks i am police yit is a nostalgia for the 19th century. i would address that. the hardest question about coolage is his depart you're in 28. this is an issue of concern and will be on the biography. on ambulance. that is because of his religious adherence. he nonetheless, had they followed coolage-like policies. in the early 19 30's, i would argue we wouldn't have had a ten-year recession. we would have had a terrible sharp recession by terrible credit probably worse than the one but it would have been less remembered. not jaust but not as ironned into our memory as the great depression is. >> i don't want to gang up over here. one of the this gp things about the tea party is that it did connect up to the republican party. one of the problems with bg methodest or prudent it doesn't inspire people. you aren't going to hear your child speak up and say, i have the ambition to grow up and be a wet blanket. americans use this ambition in culture and politics liberals go into government. conservatives aren't so much and don't go into it. >> before we take a few questions from the you had yens, i'd like to see if anyone here would like to intervene. any questions, would you please go to the micro fofpblete the morning's discussion has been so utterly convincing that no one has any questions. let's take a short break and reassemble here in say 7:30 minutes. >> next on c-span, a look at the problems of child soldiers in africa. we'll hear from strategists from both parties. topics include the general political environment and the chicago mayor's race. we'll have live coverage at 9 a.m. eastern on c-span two. jo we'll begin with the panalists. it includes all of us. i also want to say you are in for a treat as you will hear from panalists many of whom have worked with or been child soldiers. it's our responsibility to learn to deal with conflict wisely and responsefully before it escalates we will address the greatest challenge that faces hume onity. the pursuit of just and lasting peace. simply put, that means living in right relationship with self, others and the world around us. beginning to the immediate left of me with eric how he's embraced every aspect