Amity Shlaes, Author, "Coolidge"

[Music] this week on Q&A author and columnist AMD schay discusses her latest historical narrative titled [Music]

coolage AMD slays author of coolage when did you first get interested in this president I was writing my recent book forgotten

man and everything was broken forgotten man is a book about the 30s and how the economy was broken and I thought what happened before and there was a period when it was fixed and that was the 20

and that was Calvin kages so I thought this is the prequel I've got to go back and figure out what went right in the 20s for you D that talk about him I mean

you read about him today and I guess the first question I'd asked could be elected president today I think so that's really the challenge of the book

whether we can choose someone who's as uh principled as he is as president he did not believe coolage who was president from 23 to 29 that perception

is reality he thought principle was reality reality is reality so the challenge for us often is do we just have to have someone who's good-look and speaks well good salesman

or can we have someone who's got principles and I I I do think we can we kind of deceive ourselves generally that we need looks alone perception alone who

did he put around him so very important question kulage came into office from being vice president unfortunately the President waren Harding died so there's

a cabinet there and some of them are compromised we remember Harding was a period of Scandal so do you keep them and the modern position might be our

political advisers would say clean sweep right broom out get them out so you will have the appearance of Integrity but kulage also prized respect for Harding

those people weren't condemned yet innocent till proven guilty and continuity for the sake of the people and market so he kept the cabinet for a

while eventually some people left Dy you you see uh the Secretary of the Interior left the the figures who were compromised in the Harding Administration eventually left and cool

did have an investigation he named a bipartisan team that's very modern to look into corruption in the Harding Administration but he thought first of continuity when he became president that

moment in August 1923 who was his Secretary of the Treasury well that was the same guy uh that would be Andrew melon who was his and Hardings before

him and Hoover's after melon was a great figure like Alan Greenspan today or Ben Bernan though he was treasury secretary it was said of melon that three

presidents served under him he was how does that relate to the melon name that we know now the melon Bank oh who was melon melon was a very

wealthy man he made much of his money he created an empire in Pittsburgh of Steel aluminum was melon's he melon was also

what we might call a venture capitalist he would he would give a man money if a man had a good idea see what happened maybe in the end sell his share when the

man succeeded but um sometimes he buted in sometimes he didn't to the process but he loved new ideas he created a whole Institute to generate patents very uh production oriented not just what we

say a rent Seeker not just someone who bought what other people had and held on to it like a monopoly a creator of wealth so melon came to this job the job of Treasury secretary uh with a wealth

of experience from the private sector and a few convictions um and his best partner among the presidents I believe David cannedy and the melon biographer would say this too

was coolage who understood melon one thing we have to admire about coolage is he knew how to work with other men it wasn't all about Calvin he he he died at

age 60 uh right after he got out of the presidency what happened what was what was his health like well a lot of them did I think we're we're blessed with the

antiag we're blessed with Statin with crest store men now know exactly how well their heart is doing and it's pretty clear he had something cardio going on you see men dying all the time

uh in politics and especially in the presidency then Harding died essentially from kol said Harding was tired out wore himself out his predecessor Wilson had

that terrible stroke and never really recovered so the two preceding Presidents had been killed kulage was proud he made it uh I don't think he was aware of the extent to which his heart was bad

until the end that something was really wrong we've got some video that was spoken by Calvin kulage at the White House it may have been the first video of the president speaking let's watch so

people can see what he sounded like and looked like I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and

more for themselves I want them to have the rewards of their own industry this is the chief meaning of freedom until we

can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people we are bound to suffer a

very severe and distinct curtailment of our Liberty again um forget the the principles that he had but no

teleprompter reading off a piece of paper somewhat halting uh high voice all that could you think he could make it in the television age

I do I do he he actually they wondered that about him then of course the new technology then was radio and it turned out radio was a blessing for him because he had a little bit of a little bit of

wire in his voice they said and it cut through apparently a very good radio voice he thought he was on radio there and he read as though on the radio but

it it's more his I his his personality comes through I don't I don't think we should condemn people if they don't appear to us telegenic

the chapter that I I thought was was most Illuminating about him as a person was and I'm not sure that you pronounce this way the Odin what what is the what

is that chapter this is a when you get to College The Outsider that's Greek he happened to go to emmer college very interesting College it had a motto let

them um illuminate the Earth basically uh college for ministers or future ministers generally a congregationalist although there were other denominations

there in Massachusetts and kulage went down there and at the time he went down there it was a Greek school by Greek I mean it had a lot of fraternities that there were the fraternities were all

over and most kids were in them and what's interesting about Calvin and this is all the way through his life true Brian he didn't seem like he was going

to make it he got there he kind of thought he should be in a fraternity he wrote his father we have a letter saying something about that before he got there and then he he wasn't

chosen so imagine being in a very Greek school with boys richer than you and being kind of shy he wasn't Chosen and and I think this is partly we think of this when we see our families wasn't

sure he wanted to be chosen wasn't sure he wanted to give up that much of himself to a group but it's always nice to be asked and he was quite

disappointed I think when he wasn't asked and there's an interesting story there there was another boy at ammer at that time called Dwight who was actually

poorer than Calvin and maybe shorter and had a little physical disability but Dwight was a happy boy and much loved and went into a fraternity and coolage

knew him they lunched together once in a while and apparently Dwight blackballed kulage at one point for Fraternity when kulage was going to come in we have a letter that says so Dwight said not him

I'll take the other one well Dwight was one of those friends you have who thinks it over and changes his mind and has great regret and Dwight decided he had

underrated Calvin and that Dwight was Dwight marrow who then went to law school became a big partner at JP Morgan

in fact when JP Morgan was kind of down Dwight liked underdogs and eventually Calvin as president sent Dwight to patch it up with Mexico and a terrible time Dwight was our representative our

ambassador there and that he had a daughter called an Maro and coolage sent down Charles Lindberg to cheer up the Mexicans to to to bring some comedy to

the place and that is how an Maro Lindberg became an Marl Lindberg so all a lot of history came out of that uh very sort of understated a little bit

sad uh beginning of undergraduate life at ammer for Calvin kulage but when you read about him and his personality it it def it defies logic that this man could end up being president of the United

States because of his called an oddball called Quirk silent Cal how silent was he he was very silent we we have many stories you know

there's a famous story of Calvin where a lady said I bet I could get you to say more than two words at this dinner Mr Sir maybe he was vice president Grace kulage told the story his wife and he

said you lose was that Dorothy Parker I I don't think so but it was told Dorothy Parker said when he

died who could tell a very mean comment and I want to say if you go back and look at coolage he was a conservative hero and then his tax rate was a gold

standard tax rate that we saw in the video 25% was what he got the top rate down to and he fought like crazy it started remember with Wilson in the 70s

so that was an epic battle and when you go look at what all the social light said about coolage in Washington how cold he was he wouldn't meet with them you want to remember that they were probably also from families that endorse

different policies especially Alice Roosevelt Longworth whose father had a different model of President TR it was a let's get him go active bully pulpit presidency and here was coolage prissy

and cold and not giving out favors so she said he looked as though he'd been weaned on a pickle kage's silence was cultural he was from New England Farmers don't talk talk a lot or wave their arms

about because a cow might kick them if you know if you've lived uh and it was uh temperamental of temperament he was a

shy person but it also had a political purpose he knew that if he didn't talk a lot people would stop talking and of course a president or a political leader

is constantly bombarded with requests and his silence was his way of not giving in to special interests and he articulated that quite explicitly Brian

go back again to the college experience though you say he liked to he learned to like to speak how did that come in and did he ever get in a fraternity he ever

he got in a fraternity at the end at the very end senior year and it was a new one on campus uh so and he was proud he wrote his father the letters to his

father are are beautiful the Calvin kulage Memorial Foundation published them and they're hard to find I hope we can publish them again they're fabulous he wrote his father I you know I have to

have a pen all through his life you see him writing his father who wasn't at all rich but wasn't totally poor sort of uh important person in his little town I

need this I need the pin I need the cane I need the Overcoat I need the so I need this but it was very late uh last term basically senior year that kulage got and I think his classmates amorist is a

small college now and it was then recognized something in him when he began to speak he was thoughtful and he they uh we want to say also this is interesting about their education there

was a great emphasis on rhetoric in education so the kids had to speak a lot and they began to hear him and he had a teacher he loved very much Charles

Garmin uh a lot of us um like Garmin and saw and Dwight like Garmin Dwight marso his he began to have friends and feel he was in a club the club of this

particular lecturer called Garmin who lecture and seminar and he spoke in class and the other boy said wait a minute it's a new man we don't recognize him wait a minute how come we didn't

know you freshman year sophomore year we we messed up in that wonderful way you can re-evaluate someone in a classroom got got a picture that I want to show you it's not in your

book this is a picture from the courthouse yard area in Northampton uh New Hampshire where he lived it's on the

screen there and this has every job he's ever had on that on that statue you ever seen that I don't think so I want to read you though because we can go back

and talk about this CU I still want to know why you think he got all this he was born in plmouth Vermont 1872 on this statute is what it says graduate of amst

1895 admitted to Massachusetts bar 97 998 1898 city counselor Northampton 90 1901 city solicitor Northampton 1906

state representative Massachusetts 1909 mayor of the city of Northampton 1911 state senator of Massachusetts 1913 president of Massachusetts

Senate 1915 to 17 lieutenant governor then governor of the state of Massachusetts 8 and 18 and went on to be vice president in 1921 and president in 23 how do it I've never seen anything

quite like that where somebody's had that many jobs leading up to president and he almost never lost how did he do it he told someone you you have a hobby my hobby is politics running for office

is my hobby one thing was the the Republican party and the Democratic party were different and there was a a path if you help the others they helped

you he was in the party it was a club it wasn't uh to be entirely looked down upon the way we learned in school this even then the progressive City climbed the greasy pole of Massachusetts

politics it wasn't just that there's some good in the party the party trains you it helps you work efficien efficiently but it's also his incredible personal pers Severance and that's what

I try to get at in his the chapter about his time in Northampton Mass that was the county seat um so after college he looked around he couldn't really afford law school kind of bugged his father

about it that could well couldn't really afford it so he went to read the law the way they did then you could Clerk and pass the bar that way with a firm of two men who liked amoris and had been there

and were important lawyers in the town running for office themselves and he looked around and learned about his County seat why don't I just try this whereas Dwight Maro his friend went to

law school at Colombia and then went to important sort of Wall Street Bank law firm and then a bank so this was the old way the Thomas Jefferson kind of way of serving in the country don't be a city

doll that's one of the things they read in college and he was good to the party the party was good to him he learned pragmatism he practice law on and off the whole time he was very careful not

to be corrupt one of the issues of his Youth and and remember His youth is the progressive Republican party so he's looking at it and you can see a progressive record in coolage whether

he's a state lawmaker let's do this about milk or he worked on busting trusts in theaters if you can imagine they saw trusts everywhere in the Progressive Era and the hero of that era

was Theodore Roosevelt so he's thinking is this a good policy or not what progressives do hate the big fight the big reform government and clean it up Well he kind of like that part and he certainly had to work in it because he

was often assigned to clean up government to prune to shut down offices um but uh he's evaluating this the whole time I want to mention he had a mentor

who was also silent I didn't know this till I began to research in Massachusetts at the Forbes Library where much of his material is that was called W Murray crane who a Senator

Senator crane who helped TR with coal strikes uh crane was of the crane paper company so he was a businessman and the crane Paper Company there's a thing we

used to call the government plant printed the dollar so in a very interesting way crane knew about the US economy through the dollar through how

much he printed and crane 2 was silent rarely spoke uh he was the Western Massachusetts leader versus the Boston leader in in in Massachusetts politics

and that was kage's Mentor how much of the crash of 29 1929 could be blamed on coolage he left in

what March 29 so you imagine uh the stock market we look at this and Y you Stern where I teach the stock market was 100 for a long

time then it went up oh 200 very high coolage had seen a lot of recessions it doubled that's sort of like our 9s for example or also after Wars with Napoleon

if you look in past you see incredible doublings then then it went to 381 that would be September 29 kulage didn't approve that he'd seen a lot of

recessions he'd spent a lot of his life with the stock market at 100 or below he knew all every senu in him knew that was wrong he just didn't believe it was the

job of the chief executive to intervene it was the state of New York where the New York Stock Exchange was where the Dow would be the Dow Jones Industrial he knew the owner of the Wall Street Journal Dow Jones Clarence Baron but he

didn't think the president president or the treasury secretary was really in charge of that remember the Fed was also young so he looked into it there's a record of him looking into it one another Amorous man was Charles Merill

who founded what we would call Merl Lynch and Merill went to see him and they talked about it and kage was terrified because he was so conservative

and he knew what a crash was uh but he didn't see it as the president's role and neither did Merill that would be a state um Authority I don't think think you know another factor in that period

uh was what fed policy was and we all know Benjamin strong the great fed leader died and another fed head came and maybe the Fed was too loose and that's an important discussion but I do not blame this on coolage in the least

and one of the important factors you always want to look at is was the growth in the 20s real or Great Gatsby coming out now was it all champagne and a lie

the 20's growth was real most of it was real the stock market went too high my people shouldn't have bought on margin but it was not a lie of a decade which is something that we learned in school that must be revised and this is an

effort to do that revision to to expose the true 20s where did you first start being interested in Calvin Cy do you remember the time just in in the Forgotten man it's about how but

forgotten man the history of the 1930s that I wrote is about how the government came in starting with Herbert Hoover and messed it up messed up something good you know beyond the the all the things

Hoover did Bigger government was Hoover and then Roosevelt fall with even bigger and more arbitrary government so I thought what was it that they messed up and I had to go back and write a new

beginning to forgotten men and show what it was that was lost in order to show the extent of the loss and I thought wow this is very interesting the economics

of the 20 that we don't discuss them that much we kind of think they were historians tend to depict them as a lie Great Gatsby prohibition people untruth

economists tend to say wow that growth is interesting and real most of it and we talk about um for example RCA radio Corp uh was described in some of the

books the crash of the stock as a big lie just a bubble but radio Corp had an interesting invention uh on its mind what we would Now call television that

did turn out to be profitable much later so we look in economics sometimes markets overshoot when they're anticipating productiv ity gains the markets of the 20s are were really

interesting the but look at it from the point of view of people the government the the single thing that coolage did that we want to remember is when he left

office the budget was lower than when he came in that's the story for us now in a period where we're concerned well how did he do that the economy grew a lot

maybe I maybe more than 3% sometimes unemployment was below 5% the budget was balanced due to his own parsimony how' he manage though to keep make the budget

go lower and how did that help the economy a lot because he got the government out of the way of the economy very far into the way we talk about the economy now and that fascinated do you

remember how big the budget was then well the number it depends how you count it but the way he counted it was about three billion so you want to say and then it would be less than 5% of the US

economy and he was going to get it down down to three billion and that was his his his Grail his holy grail and he had and and the reason this book is so long

is the middle section of the book is about his effort with another New Englander who was um General Lord from Maine to cut the budget they didn't just

cut the tax rates they cut the budget and this is different from our modern Supply Siders who tend to put the tax rates first coolage always twinned them

and uh you'll see a photo somewhere of two lion cubs he had someone gave him two lion cubs he said you you can't just cut taxes you have to cut budget and

those lion cubs were named budget Bureau and tax reduction where did they reside they resided in the zoo they sent them to the kages loved animals but they sent A lot of them to the zoo pretty soon

we'll come back to Calvin kage in a minute but uh let's go back to the AMD slays story where did you grow up I'm from Chicago where did you go to college

I went to Yale College when you first came to us in 19 I think 1990 or so you were appeared on this network um you were back from Germany how long did you

spend in Germany I spent a few years in Germany I fortunately had a fellowship after college in Germany and got to do some journalism and then I joined the Wall Street Journal and uh I'm you know

I'm interested in Germany now too I'm interested in east Europe what we used to call east Europe and the future of democracy and freedom there and all that they've achieved and what happened so my

first work was on Germany because I had studied German and I worked as a journalist and wrote a book about Germany uh the Empire within about German's conception of who they were around the time of German unification I

want to show you yourself oh I don't well that's not very kind to do in 1993 20 years ago here you are I think the country will do just fine right now

it's it's at people say that uh it'll be a big curve after reunification because of all the troubles that they have and I'd say they're going to be at the

bottom of the curve this year um and within five maybe 10 years Germany will have Consolidated it will be a stronger country for the

reunification but they are going through a true recession uh now how uh how'd you do then they did fine they did better than we thought

I wondering now if Germany will come out of the Euro maybe Germany is setting the model for um for future economy Germany's being like Calvin kulage

because Germany is the Savor country of Europe the question is how much can it do to save Greece to to to uh help the Spenders from that time 1990 in that era

your life has changed dramatically you you dedicate this book to Eli Theo flora and Helen who are they uh those are my

four children uh at my my four children with my husband Seth lipsky the journalist and editor uh and our our uh oldest son goes to the University of

Texas our second son is a Cadet at West Point uh we have a daughter Flora who is in high school and Helen is in let's see sixth grade now all through this period

you've you've been fairly visible working uh that's right I'm a columnist where do you write I write for blo blomberg and how often I well it's a it's a regular column it's now it's i'

say it's less regular now because of various bumps but I've I've been a columnist for 10 years uh before that with the financial times Council on

formulations still with them I am not with them no I was a fellow for um in political economy there or in economic history I think for for years um and I've recently moved over to a New

Foundation President Bush 43's Foundation um which is going to be wonderful I I'm interested in presidential history now President Bush is a wonderful man a

great leader and a Republican president with an enormous archive attached at the new George W bush Center in Dallas so I I like to research I really like kage's

history and want to help it and I wanted to learn a bit uh at a presidential Center and to work on economics we I um in a program called the 4% growth program which is about economic growth

coolage had it but what's that mystery what was it let's think about it uh and the 4% growth project looks at different ways you can get stronger growth we all know that stronger growth makes

everything easier including of course the entitlement problem you still teach at New York University I do yes what do you teach I teach actually the Forgotten men the 1930s the economics of the 1930s

which are very controversial so that's fun is it right is it wrong you know so if we followed you around the last few years uh studying Calvin coolage where would we find you that's important to

say I'm a trustee of the Calvin coolage Memorial Foundation which is a great entity um and if you want to know coolage you go to Plymouth Notch where

he verm ver where he's from Vermont it's a beautiful Village well preserved the foundation is there the state is there they have a state archist Mr Jenny um we

have our own Foundation there where we do some education we have some material and in fact this summer with the bush Center we're host ing a high school economic debate how perfect for coolage

uh around the time uh that's the anniversary of his midnight swearing in by his father in in early August so a lot of young Debaters will come from a

Dartmouth clinic over and debate at the coolage place once you've been to Plymouth Notch you see how simple his background was his father rode him down

the road 10 miles bumpy road snow freezing slays to get him to high school and what overcame to be president um I want to mention some other coolage places though beyond the Forbes Library

in Northampton Massachusetts which has been a great partner for me and help me there's also the Vermont archive in Barry Vermont where many of the coolage

family papers can be found well taken care of I encourage a visit there too to any coolage scholar I want to ask you a question about something in the acknowledgements and what you think

Calvin kulage who is so Frugal personally would think you got a Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities oh he would be ambivalent about that I mean you could see the

ambivalent he didn't really like Federal money to be spent on culture once in a while he would do it and he would and you see that in his own president kulage

doesn't have a Presidential Library with a staff funded by Washington the way um President Roosevelt would have or President Hoover would have or president

that President Bush have um that he was old time he thought it's it's a wonderful story also of love for his wife he at that time he thought a

president should raise his own money for himself all of it right all of it and he loved his wife very much grace and she sacrificed a lot um she was originally a

teacher of the death at the Clark School in Northampton Massachusetts so he told his friend Clarence Baron raise me money for afterwards and baron said anything

Calvin he very close to the Wall Street Journal this is a Wall Street J story anything Calvin okay I'll raise money for and everyone thought well it should be for the coolage archive right that's

what it's supposed to be and he wanted it to be at a local library the Forbes Library where he' studied reading the law named after another saver this judge forb a legendary figure in Northampton

and Calvin said no let the money be raised from my wife's charity the Clark School for the death so he took the money that would have preserved him and

instead poured into her charity that's a great gift of love and we when you think about it you see why maybe he felt he was a little frail she had given up a lot for him she called marriage a

harness she and she loved him but she knew it was a harness they pushed together forward and he wanted to pay her back and he knew she might be around decades after him and he wanted her to

be the important lady in the town and she was because she was the chief Patron and donor of the Clark School for the death they gave the money to that so he cut off your nose to spite your

historical face right he gave his money to her you say in your book and we' noticed a lot of this is happening lately that you read the Diaries of his doctor why are these presidential

doctors and they're doing it today publishing their their U Diaries I don't think some of it's published uh some of it isn't we went to the archive I'm not

I'm not wild about the doctor the doctor's a little creepy uh just sort of had strong opinions about The Family the husband is mean to the wife Calvin you know marriage is a

complicated thing and no one can ever know all of it uh and I don't envy the White House first couples because everyone is it's really a court and everyone's always edging to favor one or

the other and the husband has his court the president and the first lady has a court and then they fight with each other like the Zars the co had a minimum of that because they were good people but it was there and the doctor sided

with Mrs kulage who was a wonderful person the extrovert to his introvert and they played off each other but he knew that she was the extrovert she knew

why he was the introvert and I their marriage is admirable in in an interesting way you can see in that post presidency gift how did you get on the foundation Board of the Calvin coues

Foundation just out of affection for it uh it is a worthy place that requires support uh and if I can do anything to help I'm not rich but if I can do

anything to help help bring others there uh to support the Calvin kage Memorial Foundation I will we have a great director Mr Sarah s r r a

and that's it's it's coolage is Mecca it's where is the foundation head um it's his place you go to it changes people's lives when they see these houses you drive uh North past low

Vermont where there's a little ski resort uh on the big road it's not hard to get to it's not much farther than say Bellows Falls Brattleboro like that uh you just drive up and you'll see

something amazing you can stay in one of those ski resorts like Hawk Mountain or the little bed and breakfast around it it's not that far from Dartmouth College which is in New Hampshire is this PL pouth Notch pouth Notch Vermont uh and

it's it's simple and it will change your life and your your life and your children's if you see it you can see the room upstairs where he worked you can see the church where uh one of his

ancestors bought a Pew I got very involved in the town records too because the kages were allergic to debt they were terrified of debt this is a book is

a story of how you overcome debt as a country or as an individual and we found that there was this one ancestor who was a debtor that's what the book opens with

because um you know they but this was their economics their business their small farms were were so important in

their lives uh and so you can just have a feel for how hard it was in Vermont in that time got some video from a program we did in

1999 on presidents and his son John was still alive oh that's wonderful he's very old in this I think how was he when he died it was oh I don't know but he his 90s I know that and it's not so long

ago that did you ever talk to him I did not he was born around let's see around 1906 okay Le let's watch this and uh you have to listen carefully but he's talking about his brother Calvin who and

I want to get that story from oh Calvin Yeah you mentioned your brother brother Calvin Jr do you have any fond memories of him that you'd like to

relate well we were always together we R together in Preparatory School we were we were we were always

together he was a fine boy very brilliant boy I had trouble keeping up with him in

school he was he was better better scholar than I was he he was quiet didn't always join in some of the

things that I did FR he was not interested in baseball which I was so the impact of Calvin Jr

on the kage presidency this is like a Lincoln story it's an amazing tragedy uh Calvin Jr was

about 16 and he got a blister on the tennis court of the White House and the blister went septic and he died within about a week if you can imagine you're

from a blister to death just before antibiotics came in again you know we're affected by these things antibiotics and so what a story and there was nothing

they could do about it kulage had lost his sister he had lost his mother and now he was losing Calvin who was the the luck child of the family indeed as you

can hear from a a happy guy a very very clever extremely loyal and he didn't know what to do I think um other

historians have told the story of the death of Calvin as the end of the kage presidency this was in 1924 he was elected that year on his own uh four more years um I don't and they say well

he was depressed for the next four years there's a book that's pretty good Gilbert that's the thesis I don't see that it's not a story of yes but the death of Calvin it's but yes that he

persevered the president not withstanding a blow almost no one he nor Grace could understand their the life of their family and you see a lot of sorrow and anger and trouble he took a a tree

from the lime kill lot of his family in Plymouth and they planted it somewhere around the White House I've not been able to discern uh the the what happened to that tree I'm not sure it made it you

can't always take a spruce and replant it in Washington soil but can you imagine they planted it so they could look out the window near the tennis court and see where Calvin had been and

the president himself said the joy of the presidency went out for me but I see him pursuing in a grand campaign his his

Civil War was the tax campaign he poured his energy into that instead and did Prevail in the tax campaign in 1926 he won the presidency outstandingly can you

imagine your son dies and then you you win in 1924 as president beating the third party the Progressive Party and

the Democrats combined the Republicans had the absolute majority in 24 even though a lot of the progressives were former Republicans so he he was

tremendously popular because of his perseverance in part uh but this story of Calvin um it just came over them and you you can see after the presidency Mrs

kulage felt free to write about Calvin which she hadn't they had trem they didn't go out and sorrow about their child in public they're very reserved people very conscious of station but

after afterwards there's a poem that we have that she wrote and of course it changed their life forever Calvin said Calvin was the child who expresses the

things you want expressed um but I want to give credit to John too for for opening the window to Calvin so lovingly not competing with him Calvin said when he worked in the tobacco field that's

the photo we so someone said Well if you know if my if my dad were vice president or president I sure wouldn't work in any tobacco field in in Massachusetts Calvin

said if your dad were my dad you would The cooles Wanted their kids to work the the the cooles emphasized virtue what what a contrast it's a big

contrast from the Roosevelts who where the kids ran around the house a lot and made a lot of noise and it was fun you can see this from The Tell alls by the servants but sometimes you know we're bit rambunctious I think they had an

animal right around in the White House the Roosevelts the kages were rigid with their kids about behaving in the White House and a kind of joyless way from time to time coolage was extremely hard

on John who went to ammer and the low Point um of his life are the letters to John which are in the barry archive where he berates John for not uh

performing well in college uh so every tragedy like the loss of a child has an effect h they suffered from the loss of

Calvin um but they did persevere and what I I like about John I wish I had known him was he was so good about preserving his father's Legacy he

understood and he was a wonderful man in that way with Incredible empathy uh and you for example the Cheese Factory in Plymouth Notch which was the president's

father's they they wanted to make money from dairy it's always a struggle they had a cheese factory because before Refrigeration cheese was the way you

transmitted protein um John started that again as a as a symbol of what it had meant to be a struggling farmer and it was important to kulage because he

always vetoed agricultural subsidy Farmers never have made much money he said but that didn't mean he didn't understand how hard it was to be a farmer so how do you working now for

George W bush and the found Foundation from his foundation how do you how do you line up the fact that he had a $5

trillion addition to the debt well these are questions we have to ask a lot of presidents and I am historically and economically oriented person and I see

that Wars cost a lot of money so let's just say that first of all um but one of the splendid things about George W bush

um is his great big spirit so if I came up to the president and I don't report to him it's a real Foundation doing work in many areas including for example

curing cervical cancer in Africa which president and said President Bush you were wrong about Medicare Part D he would say well maybe I was or maybe he

would say I wasn't wrong but he has no trouble uh creating an intellectual home for people with different ideas who might say something that might not be

totally where he was or flatter him he is in that he is very much like kulage he is not a narcissist he is not a vain man President Bush he wants to serve and

there's a connection there um with both bushes and kig it's their sense of service their spiritual side some I would say their piety they know that

it's an office that we're serving and I see in President Bush too a very little vanity about the foundation that's like kage after kage was out of office it

wasn't a about him and that's incredibly hard to do once you've been the most important person in the world you've got to stay we all know that person right once you've been on television all your

life very few people are not vain afterwards accepting you Brian so so how do you overcome that and suppress vanity and serve this preoccupies President Bush okay let me make another connection

here Vice President Bush became president in many people's eyes cuz he was the vice president with Ronald Reagan and then his son son George W bush became president because the fame

of the name Bush and you say in your book that the two things that made Calvin kulage president was the Boston police strike and the fact that he was picked as vice president so let's start

with the vice president thing how did he and it wasn't a foregone conclusion how did how did he how was he chosen how was kulage chosen yes yes this is well this is very important imagine now we have

this problem of public sector unions we might like the people in them but they're asking a lot or Reagan had the air traffic controllers they were in a union PATCO

they were good guys they were asking a lot in the case of Reagan in Paco they were jeopardizing Public Safety the public you because planes are important

they can't crash so kulage had an analogous situation as governor of Massachusetts and for because of certain anomalies in their law the governor had

a St say in the police story in Boston the policemen of Boston went on strike after World War I they were nice guys they were underpaid there was a terrible

inflation nobody was acknowledging their station houses had rats people chewed on you know little rodents chewed on their helmets 18 ways they deserved a raise they deserve better better treatment

they were overworked nonetheless they walked off and this is a very rough time in American history much rougher there was chaos and violence and rioting and

looting in Boston so kulage was on the team the leader of it that fired these policemen they un they went in a union with Sam gumper not even a very radical

Union a union the union that was the favorite of President Wilson but kulage said no right to strike against the public safety by anybody anywhere any

time I may have mixed up the order of that but those were the three phrases no right to strike against the public safety I'm drawing a line and he what's

incredibly um scary about from a political point of view is he had an election few months away he liked Irishman he was famous for getting the Irish vote the policemen were Irish he's

firing them they're nice their horses love them what a bold controversial move why was it at all good nobody knew at first the reason that it was good is

there's a limit to what a public sector Union should do and jeopardize the city's safety is too far and after that move the unions in the cities when there

didn't do that anymore and the cities felt safer and commerce was easier after that rough period he received National recognition including from Wilson who

waffled on the same issue for his bravery he did win election again even though he had turned his back on these Irishmen even though he felt terrible

about it and that gave him natural National stature and it's why he was chosen he thought he would be chosen for president so well you you paint a picture of about woodro Wilson going

across the country uh promoting the League of Nations at the same time that kulage is governor of Massachusetts dealing with the strike and how did they

stay in touch in those days and what did Wilson contribute to that whole debate well that's interesting they didn't really stay in touch I mean you kulage might call the Navy or or somebody

defend war department for help and you do see some traffic which uh from Franklin Roosevelt who was at Navy uh in this whole um issue of the of the strike

and the Port City need to police it need to feed it you know um would there be a general strike but Wilson communicated through Sam gomers who' gone to

Versailles was the union Statesman his friend who had kept labor quiet during the war well let me just back up a little bit for Samuel gomers was what

did he run American Federation of Labor AFL so he was the good labor guy and why would he have gone to what was going on well because the future of European workers and American workers is important we knew that there was going

to be revolution in Europe there was already revolution in Europe you think of imagine the Soviet Union is being formed now maybe Germany's going communist too what year was the Verde

meeting well this would be 198 19 19 1920 we had unemployment in the US we had our budget had gone up you know it was 1 billion it went to 18 billion 18

times we were we wondered whether we were bankrupt from World War I all this is going on so you need to keep the peace right and that's what Sam gers was and the police of Boston affiliated with gomers thinking they'd be safe doing

whatever they did because they were on President Wilson's side but they all those policemen were actually a whole bunch of them were fired they were all fired they were any who no except the ones who stayed the the ones we would

call scabs the ones or whatever the ones who stayed you know not all they hired new ones and that was to make a point that's rough deterrent justice of a very

old-fashioned variety that we find incredible to today so but Wilson waffled and if you read in that chapter you'll see him on one day he's kind of

on the side of the public sector unions he had his own strike to deal with uh coming or maybe in Washington that he was in charge of Washington DC he was

completely preoccupied Statesman I have to keep labor quiet so I can sell the League of Nations right imagine you know the way a president would have to so many issues choosing among them very

tired about Dev a stroke and there's these Boston policeman and he didn't know how to deal with that and uh he just kind of puts it off and the governor of Massachusetts deals with it in said that was coolage and then Wilson

says pretty good okay I accept that because the unions can't go too far even gomers was ambivalent how was Calvin kulage picked to be vice president well

he thought he would win but um that was a little you mean for president yes he did uh because he had this National stature of showing how tough he was just the way we would have a governor now

doing that um and uh but he had a problem Henry cat Lodge the senior senator from Massachusetts a great snob an institution in the Senate the the

nominal the titular not nominal but really the leader of the Senate Lodge wasn't sure he like coolage Lodge was Vain and it was all about Lodge and the cooles there are cooles all over

Massachusetts it's a big Massachusetts name coolage was some kind of swamp backwood coolage the the governor not the of coolage that that Lodge knew from Harvard right they considered amers

backwards and he didn't really take Calvin coolage seriously and he also toyed with him at times he told him he thought he might be a good candidate other times not so if your own state is

not for you at the convention Chicago surely you're not going to be nominated to be the president and coolage you didn't even actually go to that convention in Chicago we've heard about the Blackstone hotel in the Smoke fi

rooms and how Harding was chosen a senator to be president but there was a bit of a rebellion that the Senate was running the whole thing at Chicago the Republican convention and out of that

Rebellion someone said I'm going to nominate a governor not they thought Lane route would be a a a mild um in between Progressive republican from the Midwest they thought he would be and

instead they said let's get a governor so it was a Westerner who stood up and said coolage for a vice president he's a governor let's have him and there was a

a lot of Applause all of a sudden at the convention uh and that's how kulage got it unexpectedly and I I would estimate to Lodge's

displeasure you say then after Calvin kulage was elected in two 1924 as the president full fully elected after the death of Harding and all that that his vice president was Charles Daws and that

they didn't like each other he didn't like Daws what was that all about some of that was his own sanctimony and some of that was that Daws was impossible he was a rogue Deputy uh from hell how did

he get picked well do is a wonderful man he was in charge of basically procurement and distribution in World War I getting stuff for the generals to the front line so he gave a famous

speech called the hell in Maria speech where someone was picking at how he spent money and to get stuff to the front line to win the war and he said hell in Marina Maria we would do

anything to win that war and then he went the other way flam B figure very good speaker uh and was in charge of cutting the budget after the war and a

crucial job we should look at now when we're writing a new budget law because they had this budget law where they created a budget office sort of the the Forerunner to the OM but with more power

so he he was a man with Nixon went to China on the budget Daws did this he caught the budget he did the Daws plan helping Germany we lend them money they pay their the Germans paid everyone else

back what a Statesman banking family Chicago land family but he was a Maverick he'd go his own way and what infuriated kulage was that kage had some close

confirmation uh hearings planned and Daw used his inauguration we're in inauguration time to get up and berate the Senators for their poor

behavior and abuse of the filibuster essentially and he antagonized the Senate rather than following his orders from Calvin his president to to appease

make friends with grease the wheels for um the nominations to come you tell a story in here though about Calvin kulage having breakfast at the White House and

a lot of members of the Senate and all calling in sick not wanting to come that's right well he wasn't a getalong guy Harding was a getalong guy right so

kulage comes in and he's a governor he sat presided over the Senate I don't think presiding over the Senate was fun to him uh when he formerly presided over the St Senate of the state of

Massachusetts where you can vote not just in the highe but you you have more power as a head of the Senate of the state of Massachusetts in that body than you do as vice president president of

our Senate here so he he hadn't really liked the Senator's Lodge made his life hell there when he was vice president and he but I I want to say I think it

was his virtue that made them not want to come this story is coolage would host Vermont breakfasts and the Usher Ike Hoover not the president the Usher would

round up the people and ik Hoover didn't really like coolage coolage was not a good Tipper and I kept a diary lo and behold everyone loves FaceTime with the president we all go democrat or

republican when the president's summons right the Senators didn't go so there's a roster of excuses sick Senator Hein sick Senator Reed wife sick or friend

sick and you're like wow and and and iover malicious kept a record of the negative RSVPs but what I see when I look at why these PR

why these Senators turn down these Vermont breakfasts with the vapel Sy from Cool's property is they knew he wasn't going to give them anything imagine the incredible pressure

prosperity's been there for years the budget should grow why not why shouldn't it go oh the Farms need something oh let's nationalize power muscle shs with

was an abiding issue let's give the Vets more one mendicant after the other and coolage was so unsatisfying at these breakfasts he always said no and after a

while they turned his back on their back on him uh I found these quotes I don't know that they're in the book but I found I wanted to ask you about that he was offered presidency of ammer and he

says it's easier to control a congress than a college faculty well that makes sense there there's a substory there uh there was a wonderful also Rogue

president of ammer who his friend Dwight Maro would help put in Alexander Michael John and some viewers will know Michael John's name from Wisconsin where he went later and created this interesting

experimental college has a great legacy there but Michael John um was uh Progressive in a way that the amoris men

weren't used to and he basically wasn't friendly to World War I and that was as divisive as the Iraq War has been lately

it it was a a knife you know scissors through Society you were on one side or the other so the amorist alums were on one side and Michael John was on the other he wasn't Pious enough for the amorist old guys and eventually they

forced him out he didn't go easily and coolage was clearly on the side that forced him out and he he wasn't happy with that because he could see Michael I mean they could all see Michael John was

talented it was a hard call and they were all you know all of a sudden these nice men had negative articles about them in the new Republic public when they' fancied themselves fine fellows

and they had thought what what they were doing was for amorist and Michael John spent quite a bit of money that one of the issues was he borrowed and overspent on his personal life in the job as Amis

president so this was a bur in their sides they were unpopular for ejecting this University president and he didn't want to get involved in those politics rationally enough there was also a new head name just before he left office at

his early age of 60 died and I read that he gave 600 or $700,000 to his wife Grace as you know what he will to her I don't know whether it's exacted or not but I got on the calculator and it shows

it to be worth $12 million today he wasn't poor where did he make it well one way he made it was it he had another career as a successful journalist can

you Calvin kulage columnist and I like that about him too and we're I I hope uh to to build some things around that coolage wrote a column every day imagine

a how long 500 Words did you read a lot of them I did I have a book there's a wonderful book that was put together um of the there only a year he stopped

after a year just like he decided not to run again in uh 28 he stopped he said that's enough I've done them but he a lot of papers took the column he made

$75,000 as US president uh he made more as a colonist it was an embarrassing amount of money because the dep remember remember how many papers we had had then imagine every website paid you a little

that's what so we made I I believe he made 200,000 alone from the colum and it in in hard times that was a lot but it was honest work he wrote the column he was

exceedingly popular is there time for one story about that we have very little time go ahead well someone paid him to

write 10 columns for $2,000 each and okay he sends them in he gets the money and they publish only six he summons the editor at issue and says

just what the editor expects him to say I wrote 10 and you published only six and what does the editor say in response but we paid you which is the standard answer and kulage said well

maybe those columns weren't good enough here's a check for the columns you didn't print 8,000 back and then we ask why would he give back the money if the contract said

$20,000 he was entitled to keep it yes he was and that was kage's business lesson his philosophy lesson because he wanted to do business with the other party again he wanted to be a good

citizen very rare Behavior now and uh we I I admired that all right with our remaining 30 seconds which one of your children will end up being the Amity

slays of the 20 25 calendar year the writer the writer I'm going to say Helen lipsky which one

would be the teacher I'm going to oh so very difficult questions I'm going to say I I can't I I can't say there are they're all going to be uh very good and

this is dedicated to them for their own perseverance a coolage theme they all persevere and I'm very proud of them we we really are out of time but is there anything new about Calvin kulage that

you found that's in this book that he struggled with debt and found a solution as we do today and look for our own the picture on the cover is from where I

don't know actually but I would s it looks to me beginning of the presidency 1924 something like that maybe 19 anyway before it looks like before Sun died very

happy thank you Amon slays author of coolage

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