The Nation's Pulse/The Coolidgean Press Conference
Gold, Victor
THE NATION'S PULSE THE COOLIDGEAN PRESS CONFERENCE PRESIDENT (addressing a reporter): Are you taking down in shorthand what I say? REPORTER: Yes sir. PRESIDENT Now I don't think that is right. I...
...How can they tell...
...For that matter, no daily White House briefing and no press secretary...
...I have tried in the conduct of my office to be natural and I don't want to change that attitude...
...All part of that smart-aleck Manhattan crowd, the Algonquin Hotel set that did for the Roaring Twenties what Johnny Carson and David Letterman do for the Electric Eighties...
...Lucky Cal, he knew when to get out of the market...
...I think they used to say that "orthodoxy" was my doxy and "heterodoxy" was your doxy...
...Q: Would you attend the ball, Mr...
...I think it rather foreign to me to have drastic and mysterious action...
...I don't think any radical departures now occur to me...
...But the truth, beyond the caricature, is that he wasn't Silent Cal at all...
...Far and away the most successful American chief executive of the Twentieth Century—his legacy to his successor was peace, prosperity, a budget surplus, and a favorable trade balance—Coolidge has nonetheless come down through the years as an intellectual cretin with no (sigh) vision and no (groan) agenda...
...As I have indicated before, I will do the best I can to arrange one for you...
...Coolidge was President while Wall Street was a raging bull, but equally important, a third of a century before the coaxial cable was laid and the antennaed roof fell in...
...I suppose that is why this is news...
...In another version of the story, the question is asked by Dorothy Parker...
...The ground rules for these sessions were, like Coolidge himself, to the point, take it or leave it...
...No matter...
...Of course, Coolidge himself paid a terrible price for his self-reliance in dealing with the press...
...asked Wilson Mizner...
...I don't expect he is going to resign, and I hope, for the sake of his peace of mind, that his resignation will not be reported in the future oftener than once in two weeks...
...Would it be consistent to ask if the Chief Executive has in contemplation any radical departure from his present policies...
...I [don't] want to keep rehashing . . . the same thing, because it irritates foreign countries . . . and they wonder why the White House keeps making statements that don't appear to them very helpful...
...Coolidge on Presidential Outreach: Q: Any speeches planned, Mr...
...But still, through the thin screen of longhand notes taken by reporters at these sessions, a fresh view of Coolidge emerges, something far different from the Algonquin caricature...
...Coolidge on Not Accommodating the Press: THE PRESIDENT: I don't want to cut off newspaper discussion about anything, but it isn't helpful for me to keep talking about certain foreign relations unless there is some development that warrants some statement on my part...
...Notes from the Oval Office, July 23, 1925 C alvin Coolidge left the presidency sixty years ago this past March, after watching Herbert Hoover take theoath...
...THE PRESIDENT: Well, you can't have a ball in the White House You couldn't get anybody in there, not even the newspapermen...
...Answers were to be attributed to a "White House Spokesman...
...Ten years ago, through the University of Massachusetts Press, Robert H. Ferrell and Howard H. Quint published a book Victor Gold is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...I don't think so...
...Coolidge on the Federal Surplus: THE PRESIDENT: No evidence has come to me that the next Treasury surplus will be in excess of the $252,540,000 that has already been made public...
...I don't anticipate to change very much...
...No Dan Rather to contend with...
...President...
...Coolidge on his Place in History (in response to a question asked at his last press conference in the White House, March 1, 1929): THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business...
...THE PRESIDENT: No, the secretary of war has not resigned...
...In still another, by Franklin P. Adams...
...Not that Coolidge's image problem was confined to the urban East...
...They furnished the nimble one-liners which, if a President wasn't careful, would define his image not only for his own time but for future generations...
...Coolidge on his Public Image: THE PRESIDENT: There is considerable speculation as to whether I am likely to change or not...
...A case can be made that Herbert Hoover's troubles began when he became the first President in history to hire a spin doctor...
...by Victor Gold titled The Talkative President, a collection of excerpts from the twice-weekly off-the-record sessions that Coolidge held with the dozen proper newsmen assigned to the White House beat...
...No ravenous news wolves prowling the corridors, hungry for red meat because theydidn't think the White House press secretary's daily briefing was all it should be...
...THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven't made any plans yet for a summer vacation...
...Coolidge on Freedom of the Press: Q: Has the secretary of war resigned...
...President, do you mean [to have] a charity ball or something of that kind outside the White House...
...Mizner, Parker, Adams, they were all the same to Coolidge...
...Coolidge on Accommodating the Press: Q: Do you have any plans for a summer vacation...
...Coolidge on Potomac Punditry: THE PRESIDENT: A news story in the Washington Star this afternoon hints at some drastic and mysterious action which the President proposes to take within the next few months...
...I don't want to 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 unduly restrict the reporting, but I think that would be often enough...
...Coolidge on the Presidential High-life: Q: Mr...
...THE PRESIDENT: I haven't any plans for speaking away from Washington after the first of March...
...President...
...While I don't want to disagree with as good an authority as the Washington Star . . . I think you would be warranted in prophesying, if any of you want to prophesy, that I have at present no expectation of any drastic and mysterious action...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 33...
...Coolidge on the Great Deficit to Come: THE PRESIDENT: Of course, a good many proposals are made by people that have very excellent things they would like to have Government do, but they [also] have no responsibility for providing ways and means by which their proposals can be carried out...
...No strobe lights...
...H ere then, for those interested in pre-Salvation presidential history—what things were like in the White House, that is, before the Coming of the New Deal and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s historical ministry—a brief but varied sampling of Calvin Coolidge's encounters with the press, courtesy Ferrell & Quint: • Coolidge on Political Ideology: THE PRESIDENT: I don't think I can give any definition of the words "reactionary" and "progressive" that would be helpful...
...Questions had to be submitted in advance to Coolidge's chief (and only) senior aide, C. Bascom Slemp...
...Those who [had to select] the people that should be invited to a ball in the East Room would have some trouble...
...I don't think in all my experience . . . with prosposals for spending money, that I have ever had any proposal from anyone as to what could be done to raise money, and very few [as to] what can be done to save money...
...Coolidge is dead, "someone reported...
...In the heartland there was William Allen White of Emporia, Kansas, whose book, A Puritan in Babylon, while it had no effect on Coolidge's popularity as President, would fill out the caricature merely sketched by the New Yorkers—the portrait of Silent Cal, the Great Non-Communicator...
...It is something different . . . from what you gentlemen have led the public to expect of me...
...I don't think that is the proper thing to do . . . I don't object to you taking notes as to what I say, but I don't quite (talk) to the conference in anything like finished style . . . anything that would naturally be associated with Presidential utterance...
...Dealing with the press was all so calm and orderly back then...
...Quite the contrary...
...I am going out speaking just as little as possible and keep the public peace...
...No verbatim quotes allowed...
...That reminds me a little of the old definition of "orthodoxy" and "heterodoxy...
...THE PRESIDENT: You mean if they have one...
...Note: Coolidge was wrong...
...So .. . proper...
...You can look it up...
...The actual surplus came to $398,000,000...
...Timing, as the matador said, it's all a matter of timing...
Vol. 22 • April 1989 • No. 4
