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...
...Hoover had "style...
...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...
...C: A Truman who spat tobacco...
...Briefly, of course...
...His nature might even have protected his President for the worst...
...S: Nine minutes past the hour, Mr...
...Q: Yes, sir...
...I only kept him on at Commerce because he had an "in" with the press...
...Q: As I was saying, she was a woman with definite ideas, who simply didn't appreciate your style...
...Young man, you ask damnfool questions...
...Don't be too successful...
...Watergate was nonsense...
...Q: Gerald Ford...
...Q: What about Kennedy...
...Q: ...is business...
...I am fed up hearing about Watergate...
...C: I'd prefer not...
...We cannot afford rash experiments"—was as contemporary as a paragraph from one of Jerry Brown's better speeches...
...As I recollect, you asked if I saw any kinship between my 1924 campaign and your incumbent's...
...Q: Herbert Hoover...
...Q: How so...
...Calvin, beyond John Hiram McKee's Coolidge Wit & Wisdom...
...Q: Lyndon Johnson...
...C: Trashy mouth...
...Q: The nomination in 1928...
...You want to know if I see a parallel, as you call it, between Teapot and Watergate...
...C. I think he would have made an honest aide to an honest President...
...A political leader whose essential political philosophy—"Promises and good intentions are not enough...
...Q: Any final advice for future American Presidents, sir...
...What has style to do with running the U.S...
...C: Not really...
...C: And also runs you plumb out of time...
...C: Thank you, Slemp...
...C: That is the bunch...
...What might have been...
...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...
...but all was happily resolved, and we present the following question-and-answer session as transcribed, in line with Mr...
...Roos-e-velt...
...What good did it do him...
...Did you, Slemp...
...Coolidge, if you don't mind, let's go over that again...
...What was Calvin Coolidge really like...
...C: I will confess, for a Democrat that one had some pretty fair qualities...
...I called Hoover "wonder boy...
...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...
...News & World Report, eat your heart out...
...Ford's problems, now, are something else...
...They seem to need a crisis every once in awhile to stay happy...
...Anticipating that question this landmark anniversary year, The Alternative in mid-1975 launched a search for an answer...
...Q: Harry Truman...
...Q: March 4, 1933...
...Fall, Daugherty, Doheny, Sinclair...
...Something about the place...
...Q: Then you think that despite what his critics say, Nixon was essentially honest...
...Gold's credentials for this assignment are impressive...
...the spot where Amelia Earhart's plane was last sighted...
...My answer again was, none...
...Chattered over at lunch, back when I was President...
...Q: No, sir...
...Poor political bloodlines...
...Q: If you don't mind my saying, sir, you sound fairly bitter about it...
...Q: Mr...
...The Coolidge "image"—to use a term the man himself would disdain—remains a rippled distortion in the circus mirror of twentieth-century history...
...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...
...But ran into the same problem I did...
...Except, as long as you're looking into it, that crowd had more to do with my posthumous reputation than anyone else...
...Teapot came out of a corruption of the flesh...
...From now on I intend to refer all those fellows to that interview I bad with The Alternative...
...C: Ask away...
...I will be frank, young fellow...
...It happens I looked on my Republican successor as a political babein-the-woods...
...There ensued weeks of negotiations regarding interview groundrules...
...Slemp, you disappoint me...
...But no bother, not back then...
...But he was brought up in the wrong place...
...C: How could you tell...
...But Texas, I just don't know...
...C: Yes...
...More trouble than it was worth to get rid of him...
...Q: What about Nixon...
...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...
...Who else...
...production to the undoubted liberal Democratic bias of producers like David Susskind and actors like Hal Holbrook and James Whitmore...
...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...
...But seeing I agreed to talk to you 12 minutes—keep track of your timepiece, Slemp—I allow I am obliged to...
...C: The Algonquin bunch, one generation removed...
...C: Crisis or not, a President must always keep in mind that the business of America...
...C: Ford suffers from what my grandfather Galusha Coolidge used to call "the wishes...
...I say, none...
...I found most self-made millionaires in politics that way...
...C: Yes...
...Q: Would you care to elaborate on that subject a bit...
...You're not my cup, but you don't seem a bad sort...
...To be sure, we may charge off the unlikelihood of a Keep 'em Cool, Calvin...
...I must have 150 requests for interviews on my desk...
...Q: You mean, corruption of the spirit...
...We Republicans were the majority party...
...Coolidge's esophagus...
...But I will not waste breath on Watergate...
...C: None whatever...
...And as Slemp here will tell you, I always choose my words carefully...
...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...
...Q: Pardon...
...This fellow really isn't a bad sort...
...Boston Irish politician with a Harvard education...
...Harding was honest, you know...
...C: They will...
...Coolidge, Dorothy Parker was a woman...
...Q: Would you mind explaining that, sir...
...Course I mean Herbert Hoover...
...After the usual false leads—Buenos Aires...
...Coolidge's wishes, by his trusted Presidential aide, C. Bascom Slemp...
...A Johnson from Vermont might have been another matter...
...Our countrymen get bored with too much peace and prosperity...
...Even wrote it out for the press...
...C: That one should never have gone into elective politics...
...C: You mean "hankering for power," so just say "hankering for power...
...C: Young fellow, you are wasting valuable time...
...But it does get complicated, looking back on history...
...But could you comment on any of your other successors in the White House...
...If I had meant Henry, I would have said "Henry...
...S: Two more minutes, Mr...
...At this point in the conversation a sound convulsed from the general area of Mr...
...Well, "wonder boy" got what he wanted...
...Calvin Coolidge, May 1976 6 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976...
...C: Every word...
...That was my problem...
...But ask a couple more...
...Davis could talk Teapot all he wanted, but as long as the market was bullish nobody listened...
...In '24, common sense ruled the roost...
...You have not impressed me to now with your questions...
...Coolidge...
...I was looking to feel a draft in '28...
...It's just that as an Amherst man, I never cared much for talky smart-alecks...
...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...
...Never cared much for my ways...
...The kind of corruption I expect from Democrats, never Republicans...
...They wrote the histories...
...What's the time...
...All those birds were out for money...
...I was not President in 1929 and died, you know, two months before the real deluge...
...That's not true these days...
...C: Slemp...
...Blatherskite...
...Though I think he might have made some President a good personal aide, like Slemp here does...
...an emission which, from any other interview subject, would be taken for a mild chuckle...
...Q: Thank you, sir...
...C: That is Algonquin table talk...
...Do you see such a parallel...
...What do you find objectionable about the phrase "corruption of the spirit...
...He wishes he was somebody hes not...
...S: Six-and-a-half minutes past the hour, Mr...
...But one word of caution...
...C: Just say that throughout my public career Providence and I worked a fair tandem...
...Like that Dorothy Parker...
...Coolidge: there was an American President both of, and ahead of, his time...
...Coolidge...
...In spades...
...But I cannot believe you are so foolish as to waste one on that subject...
...C: Yes, indeed...
...Q: When you say "Algonquin bunch," are you referring to Alexander Woodcott, Franklin P. Adams, Dorothy Parker...
...Ford thinks if he works at it, the Algonquins will invite him to lunch...
...Q: Mr...
...S: Oh, Garner wasn't all that bad, Cal...
...And Ike's...
...Q: You're amused, Mr...
...C: Slemp, what does your timepiece say...
...Q: But you said you didn't choose to run that year...
...Their kind came in with Roosevelt in '33...
...But "wonder boy" could hardly wait...
...They, and their Harvard friends...
...Jumped right in...
...Q: Which brings us to the present, Mr...
...President...
...All "style...
...Coolidge, you succeeded a Republican President whose Administration had gone down in disgrace...
...C: High-flown stuff that Manhattan bunch printed in their slick magazines...
...President...
...C: Worst combination of all, that one...
...What about Gerald Ford and the future...
...Q: Mr...
...C: Yes...
...Like your fellow Romney...
...That is the sort of flapdoodle that bunch brought in...
...Writers, theorists...
...President...
...Q: Didn't you mean it...
...If Nixon had been Harding's Haldeman, I think he would have caught onto Fall and Daugherty...
...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...
...The Algonquin bunch has taken over Washington...
...That's what comes of living in a generation that learned history from the Algonquin bunch and their Harvard friends...
...I don't condone it, but I comprehend it...
...C: By golly, Slemp, I was right...
...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...
...I never knew an honest politician from Texas...
...You can see what it took the country to...
...C: Best of the lot...
...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: You disapprove of that approach to politics...
...C: Thank you, Slemp...
...C: Style...
...Pure and simThe Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 5 ple...
...Didn't have the temperament...
...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...
...C: Before he becomes President a man should know who he is and stick with it...
...Government...
...U.S...
...Q: Eisenhower...
Vol. 9 • June 1976 • No. 9
