Precisely Twelve Minutes with Silent Cal
Gold, Vic
The Alternative: An American Spectator • June/July 1976 • Volume 9, Number 9 Vic Gold Precisely Twelve Minutes with Silent Cal • • Readers of The Alternative need no reminder that July 4, 1976...
...But one word of caution...
...Q: Eisenhower...
...an emission which, from any other interview subject, would be taken for a mild chuckle...
...His nature might even have protected his President for the worst...
...Their kind came in with Roosevelt in '33...
...Coolidge...
...If I had meant Henry, I would have said "Henry...
...Coolidge, if you don't mind, let's go over that again...
...the spot where Amelia Earhart's plane was last sighted...
...Possessed of a hyperactive imagination, a large measure of impressionability, and a willingness, if not zeal, to put words into other people's mouths, he has in recent times conducted successful occult interviews with such luminous spirits as Niccolo Machiavelli, El Cid, Clyde Barrow, Madame de Stall,and, only six months ago, Jerry Brown himself...
...Q: Thank you, sir...
...C: And also runs you plumb out of time...
...C. I think he would have made an honest aide to an honest President...
...At this point in the conversation a sound convulsed from the general area of Mr...
...C: Before he becomes President a man should know who he is and stick with it...
...Even wrote it out for the press...
...There ensued weeks of negotiations regarding interview groundrules...
...I called Hoover "wonder boy...
...Q: What about Nixon...
...But "wonder boy" could hardly wait...
...C: The Algonquin bunch, one generation removed...
...That is the sort of flapdoodle that bunch brought in...
...Q: It's just that our readers will be somewhat surprised to learn you would speak, shall I say, less than kindly, of your Republican successor...
...Q: You disapprove of that approach to politics...
...Our countrymen get bored with too much peace and prosperity...
...Q: Would you care to elaborate on that subject a bit...
...I found most self-made millionaires in politics that way...
...Didn't have the temperament...
...Gold's credentials for this assignment are impressive...
...But I cannot believe you are so foolish as to waste one on that subject...
...S: Six-and-a-half minutes past the hour, Mr...
...News & World Report, eat your heart out...
...I am fed up hearing about Watergate...
...Q: Then you think that despite what his critics say, Nixon was essentially honest...
...U.S...
...Briefly, of course...
...What good did it do him...
...What might have been...
...Teapot came out of a corruption of the flesh...
...Q: Mr...
...not a conventional search either, but an unprecedented quest for a definitive answer, beyond the limited biographical data that cover the complex, career and character of our thirtieth President, beyond, that is, William Allen White's A Puritan in Babylon, beyond Duff Gilfond's The Rise of St...
...S: Nine minutes past the hour, Mr...
...But no bother, not back then...
...Though I think he might have made some President a good personal aide, like Slemp here does...
...C: Style...
...You want to know if I see a parallel, as you call it, between Teapot and Watergate...
...You can see what it took the country to...
...Q: Yes, sir...
...Watergate was nonsense...
...And Ike's...
...C: Not really...
...All those birds were out for money...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator • June/July 1976 • Volume 9, Number 9 Vic Gold Precisely Twelve Minutes with Silent Cal • • Readers of The Alternative need no reminder that July 4, 1976 marks a historic date in the development of Western political thought and the conservative ideal of a free society...
...To be sure, we may charge off the unlikelihood of a Keep 'em Cool, Calvin...
...Who else...
...C: Best of the lot...
...The Algonquin bunch has taken over Washington...
...I was not President in 1929 and died, you know, two months before the real deluge...
...If Nixon had been Harding's Haldeman, I think he would have caught onto Fall and Daugherty...
...C: That is Algonquin table talk...
...Never cared much for my ways...
...Course I mean Herbert Hoover...
...Q: Didn't you mean it...
...Hoover had "style...
...I never knew an honest politician from Texas...
...But it does get complicated, looking back on history...
...And as Slemp here will tell you, I always choose my words carefully...
...Q: If you don't mind my saying, sir, you sound fairly bitter about it...
...Poor political bloodlines...
...Q: March 4, 1933...
...Q: Gerald Ford...
...President...
...Specifically, the editors assigned Vic Gold, a pioneer practitioner of the art of occult journalism, to track down the spirit of Silent Cal and get him to talk, on-therecord...
...Q: Mr...
...It's just that as an Amherst man, I never cared much for talky smart-alecks...
...What has style to do with running the U.S...
...Thus, despite a latter-day nostalgia binge that finds stage and television audiences held in thrall by historical re-creations of the down-home characters of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Harry Truman, the suggestion of An Evening with Calvin Coolidge falls on deaf theatrical ears...
...Q: How so...
...For on that day—one would hope—millions of discerning Americans in all parts of the world will pause a moment in their Bicentennial celebrations to commemorate the 104th anniversary of the birth of Calvin Coolidge...
...What about Gerald Ford and the future...
...Some contemporary viewers of the political scene compare Gerald Ford's 1976 problems to your own when you ran for a full term in 1924...
...Fall, Daugherty, Doheny, Sinclair...
...What was Calvin Coolidge really like...
...In '24, common sense ruled the roost...
...Well, "wonder boy" got what he wanted...
...C: Yes...
...C: I'd prefer not...
...Coolidge's wishes, by his trusted Presidential aide, C. Bascom Slemp...
...S: Two more minutes, Mr...
...Q: Lyndon Johnson...
...I say, none...
...Q: Harry Truman...
...A political leader whose essential political philosophy—"Promises and good intentions are not enough...
...the Tibetan Himalayas—Gold finally located Coolidge at, of all predictable sites, the late President's beloved summer White House in the Black Hills of South Dakota...
...C: That one should never have gone into elective politics...
...That was my problem...
...I don't condone it, but I comprehend it...
...C: How could you tell...
...We Republicans were the majority party...
...President...
...Calvin Coolidge, May 1976 6 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976...
...Q: No, sir...
...Boston Irish politician with a Harvard education...
...Harding was honest, you know...
...They, and their Harvard friends...
...Q: When you say "Algonquin bunch," are you referring to Alexander Woodcott, Franklin P. Adams, Dorothy Parker...
...Coolidge, you succeeded a Republican President whose Administration had gone down in disgrace...
...Q: Which brings us to the present, Mr...
...But Texas, I just don't know...
...Q: Mr...
...Jumped right in...
...Q: The nomination in 1928...
...Q: Pardon...
...Slemp, you disappoint me...
...C: Yes...
...Coolidge, Dorothy Parker was a woman...
...Coolidge: there was an American President both of, and ahead of, his time...
...C: Trashy mouth...
...It happens I looked on my Republican successor as a political babein-the-woods...
...Do you see such a parallel...
...You're not my cup, but you don't seem a bad sort...
...C: You mean "hankering for power," so just say "hankering for power...
...C: Crisis or not, a President must always keep in mind that the business of America...
...C: Worst combination of all, that one...
...Q: As I was saying, she was a woman with definite ideas, who simply didn't appreciate your style...
...They seem to need a crisis every once in awhile to stay happy...
...Yet, in fairness, the most ardent Coolidge buff must concede that to a large extent our hero, by assiduously cultivating the myth of Yankee laconism during his years in the White House, brought many of his troubles on himself...
...Q: Would you mind explaining that, sir...
...As I recollect, you asked if I saw any kinship between my 1924 campaign and your incumbent's...
...C: Thank you, Slemp...
...That's not true these days...
...I only kept him on at Commerce because he had an "in" with the press...
...Except, as long as you're looking into it, that crowd had more to do with my posthumous reputation than anyone else...
...They wrote the histories...
...But ask a couple more...
...You have not impressed me to now with your questions...
...C: High-flown stuff that Manhattan bunch printed in their slick magazines...
...C: They will...
...Q: You're amused, Mr...
...C: None whatever...
...Calvin, beyond John Hiram McKee's Coolidge Wit & Wisdom...
...C: Young fellow, you are wasting valuable time...
...Don't be too successful...
...C: By golly, Slemp, I was right...
...C: Thank you, Slemp...
...What's the time...
...S: Oh, Garner wasn't all that bad, Cal...
...Q: But you said you didn't choose to run that year...
...The kind of corruption I expect from Democrats, never Republicans...
...C: Slemp, what does your timepiece say...
...But could you comment on any of your other successors in the White House...
...Pure and simThe Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 5 ple...
...My answer again was, none...
...That's what comes of living in a generation that learned history from the Algonquin bunch and their Harvard friends...
...After the usual false leads—Buenos Aires...
...What do you find objectionable about the phrase "corruption of the spirit...
...C: Every word...
...But ran into the same problem I did...
...But he was brought up in the wrong place...
...Q: ...is business...
...Q: Any final advice for future American Presidents, sir...
...We cannot afford rash experiments"—was as contemporary as a paragraph from one of Jerry Brown's better speeches...
...Ford's problems, now, are something else...
...C: Slemp...
...He wishes he was somebody hes not...
...Something about the place...
...From now on I intend to refer all those fellows to that interview I bad with The Alternative...
...C: Ask away...
...Coolidge...
...Coolidge's esophagus...
...C: A Truman who spat tobacco...
...I will be frank, young fellow...
...President...
...In spades...
...Government...
...Young man, you ask damnfool questions...
...All "style...
...And Jerry Brown, as we know, is nothing less than the avant garde of the New Politics of 1976, a young American politician admired by most, if not all, of the selfsame critics who put Cal Coolidge down as a Presidential joke...
...I was looking to feel a draft in '28...
...C: Yes, indeed...
...A Johnson from Vermont might have been another matter...
...Q: Herbert Hoover...
...but all was happily resolved, and we present the following question-and-answer session as transcribed, in line with Mr...
...C: I will confess, for a Democrat that one had some pretty fair qualities...
...But I will not waste breath on Watergate...
...This fellow really isn't a bad sort...
...Q: You mean, corruption of the spirit...
...Indeed, 43 years after his death, the real Coolidge is as much an enigma to his countrymen as he was the day he took office as President, August 3, 1923, following the passing of Warren G. Harding from a mixed diet of rotten crabmeat and political associates...
...Chattered over at lunch, back when I was President...
...Did you, Slemp...
...Blatherskite...
...production to the undoubted liberal Democratic bias of producers like David Susskind and actors like Hal Holbrook and James Whitmore...
...But seeing I agreed to talk to you 12 minutes—keep track of your timepiece, Slemp—I allow I am obliged to...
...Like your fellow Romney...
...Anticipating that question this landmark anniversary year, The Alternative in mid-1975 launched a search for an answer...
...More trouble than it was worth to get rid of him...
...C: Ford suffers from what my grandfather Galusha Coolidge used to call "the wishes...
...Writers, theorists...
...C: Yes...
...I must have 150 requests for interviews on my desk...
...C: That is the bunch...
...Like that Dorothy Parker...
...Davis could talk Teapot all he wanted, but as long as the market was bullish nobody listened...
...Q: What about Kennedy...
...C: Just say that throughout my public career Providence and I worked a fair tandem...
...Ford thinks if he works at it, the Algonquins will invite him to lunch...
...Roos-e-velt...
...The Coolidge "image"—to use a term the man himself would disdain—remains a rippled distortion in the circus mirror of twentieth-century history...
Vol. 9 • June 1976 • No. 9
