January 19, 2024 • 44 mins
When President Warren G Harding passed away abruptly while in office, his Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumed in the role of Commander in Chief. Today, he's not as well-known as other US Presidents like Lincoln or Washington -- yet his history remains fascinating and unique. Tune in as the guys explore the strange story of the man sometimes known as "Silent Cal."
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. Shout out to another guy, a very cool cat,
who is in fact following up on a pop quiz
for our Ridiculous Historians tuning in earlier this week. Calvin
(00:47):
Coolidge was not, in fact the basis of Calvinism. There
are a lot of people named Calvin in the world.
And know all you pointed out, Calvin Clyde, You're no Brown,
I'm ben Bowling. But out of all the US presidents
named Calvin, this guy is automatically the coolest.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And as of the recording of this podcast, forty five
individual human people have held the position of president of
these United States. And Max pointed out that there might
be some personnikity listeners that would say, hey, Max, what's
the deal? There have been forty six presidents. You have
to remember, fair listeners, that Grover.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Cleveland was both the twenty second and the twenty fourth president.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
And there are the facts.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, there we go. And there were a lot of
also rants in Potus history. That's just the acronym president
of the United States. One person who gets a lot
of heat is a president named Warren G. Harding. Hang on, Ben,
you might be saying, why are we talking about Harding?
(02:14):
You just made such a big deal about a president
named Calvin Well. That's because Warren G. Harding, Warren G.
Warren G.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was the regulator.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yep, he's the first one. Warren G. Gets elected president.
We're abbreviating a lot of this. Here's what you need
to know. Warren G. Becomes president, he is unfortunately unable
to complete his term of office. He passes away while
he's president in nineteen twenty three. And this means that
(02:46):
his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, automatically becomes commander in chief,
the thirtieth president in the history of the United States.
And you know, I love credit. I love shouting out
our research associates. Credit to Max Williams for this beautiful
turn of phrase. Here what would ensue would arguably be
(03:09):
the call mist boringist presidency in the history of America,
but also somehow the most hilarious and ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dare we say so?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It's very important to shout out our research associates, and
in today's episode, we're going to dive into the history
of a guy who had a street name as President
Silent Cal.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And this is not like one of the classic opposite
day nicknames like Little John, not the rapper, but the
member of the Robin Hood, Mary Band or.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know what was it. There was actually someone in history.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I know what it was. It was in Skyrim. There
is an orphanage in riftin I believe that is run
by this sort of miss Hannigan type figure. I can't
remember her name, but when you talk to one of
the NPC's when you go in and hear her beating
the child and saying, how you gotta snipes, will never
be adopted ever, you're mine, And they say, the nice
(04:06):
kind lady that works there tells you, yeah, people around
town call her kind Margaret or something loved.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The kind.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Boiler certainly on the Brotherhood also haven't gone. I did
immediately want to murder her. But Silent Cal was in
fact quite a laconic figure, the one that definitely wouldn't
talk unless he had something to say.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Favorite mentioned this on the on the air in a
previous episode, so got to give credit where its to.
My favorite Talvin Coolidge anecdote is one time someone came
up to him and said, because he's so famously taciturn,
they came up to him and said, I bet I
could get three words out of you, and our buddy
(04:54):
cal looked around, looked at the person, and then said,
you lose.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Ooh, James set match match whatever. Yeah, Calvin, what a guy.
Let's learn more about him, though, Let's do it. David Greenberg,
writer of Calvin Coolidge Life before the Presidency for the
University of Virginia's Miller Center, had this to say. Coolidge
was born John Calvin Coolidge Junior on July fourth, eighteen
(05:21):
seventy two, in Plymouth.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Notch, Vermont.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
He grew up helping his storekeeper father tend to the accounts,
selling apples, and doing other chores around the store at
home on the family farm. As a boy, Coolidge had
little ambition in life beyond hoping to follow his father
as a good.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Honest, small town merchant.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
In the original course of research here, I had initially
misread that that passage as Calvin Coolidge grew up helping
his storekeeper father to tend apples and sell accounts, which is.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You know, sketchy selling it well maybe yeah the time.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So anyway, yeah, let's let's learn about the patter familias here.
The senior Coolidge is a kind of hard nosed guy.
He's a pillar of the community, upstanding dude, probably not
a ton of fun at parties. But he's also active
in local government. He's in the Vermont's House Representatives, he
(06:21):
serves a term in the Senate of Vermont. And he
also he's one of those guys who is continually in
local office, like one of my kind of sketchy uncles. Sorry,
Uncle Sam.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Isn't Bernie Sanders from Vermont?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Isn't that Sanders? Yeah, Sanders is a Vermont guy.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
It just strikes me as a place that breeds level
headed individuals.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Maybe it's it's beautiful in autumn. Go if you get
a chance, people drive up there just to see the leaves.
So everybody says, all right, this guy Coolidge is he
he's not a wild Coolidge, the elder patter familius. Again,
he's not a wild man. You know. You see, some
(07:06):
years he's the peace officer, some years he's the tax collector.
But he is good at his job. He's good at
running his store, he's thrifty, he's also a farmer, and
he's got this sort of solidity to him. He is
an anchor for the town and he's committed to public service.
And this is something that we know young Calvin aspired to.
(07:29):
He really looked up to his father on miny levels.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, for sure, and he also appreciated how good he
was with money. And I love how David Greenberg describes
the younger Coolidge in terms of his academic pursuits. He
described him as a fair to average student in the
Plymouth Elementary school, and he did manage to make good
enough grades to get into Amherst College, which was considered,
(07:55):
you know, prestigious at the time. So he must have
worked hard because if if he's considering him a fair
to average student he's getting into a prestigious university, that
probably means he had to bust his butt to like
keep those grades up and that it was important to him.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
He wasn't just naturally a whiz, you know in school.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Sure, yeah, he is not necessarily the most precocious student,
but he does understand the value of study and hard work.
He gets excellent grades in his last two years at
Amherst College. He graduates with honors in fact cum laude,
and he becomes a member of the Republican Club and
(08:34):
the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. He also gets He also
gets known for his dry wit, and I love that
he was lauded for his public speaking skills. He actually
got the junior prize in oratory competitions, which is just like,
who is the best at talking in front of more
(08:54):
than four people?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, and it's funny.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I mean, when you think about his reputation as being
somewhat taciturn, it is kind of funny that he was
the one who was brought up to host sort of
like a roast kind of situation of the graduating class.
I just I don't know I can possibly even attempt
to do it. I'm just not funny enough. But I
would love to see a sketch where someone did like
a stand up comedy set presented by Calvin Coolidge. It'd
(09:19):
probably be something along the lines of like Joe Para,
you know, very monotone, kind of meadow, kind of string
of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I'm just picturing this. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
He also, in addition to that, and obviously that's a
pitch for his upcoming podcast. He also got first prize
for his essay The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution.
He eventually goes to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he reads law
in a law firm. He passes the bar in the
(09:50):
summer of eighteen ninety seven. One big thing about the
United States versus a lot of other powerful countries is
that many US press scidents have their background in the
world of law, in the world of litigation. You can
look at other countries where many leaders have their background
in engineering stuff like that. It's just it's a cultural
(10:12):
fun fact. He opens a law office, and if you
own a law office in the late eighteen hundreds, guess what.
You also participate in local politics. And that's what Calvin does.
Following I would argue in his father's footsteps.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
And Coolidge's sort of ascension into political life was very
measured and it was just kind of like slow and
steady wins the race. And around nineteen hundred he started
to do some work with the local Republican Club in Northampton,
and this ultimately led to him getting a place on
(10:50):
the city council.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
So in his ascension he becomes Lieutenant governor in nineteen sixteen.
He holds that role for two years, and then he
gets some national press because he runs for the position
of governor of Massachusetts and he barely wins. He just
edges out the Democratic candidate, Richard H. Long, and so
(11:14):
now the eyes of the world and probably people in
Congress are upon him. And this is fratuitous timing because
the Republican Party, as we know, returns to power at
the end of World War One. And then also he
does some things that remain controversial to some. He gets
(11:38):
a lot of press across the nation when he calls
on the National Guard of Massachusetts to break a strike
by the Boston City Police, and then he says, there
is no right to strike against the public safety by
anybody anywhere anytime.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
We don't like that. That's not great.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
This was seen historically, you know, upon further analysis, is
something of a reactionary move, but it was actually pretty
popular at the time because labor sentiment pro labor sentiment
was not necessarily what it is today.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I guess it's still a little.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Bit complicated for some people, but at the time it
certainly wasn't, you know, considered like the position of the
you know, moral individual, the moral citizen, that workers deserve
to be treated with respect, and it got him some
pretty serious support.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
I do want to jump in here though, and say, like,
there was actually an extensive writing I found while researching
this that said Coolidge kind of regretted doing this in
the future because he was up despite like, you know,
he was a Republican, he was a fisical conservative, but
he was actually a pretty progressive dude, and he would
look back like, I shouldn't have done that, but because
it's like, you know, the cops are striking, but also
you know, you shouldn't send the National Guard into break
(12:57):
a strike.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, yeah, I mean there was a sense I think
maybe it wasn't so much about like the public at
large being anti labor, but the results of these types
of strikes were lawlessness, or at least we're seeing as lawlessness,
and I think the general population was like looking at
strikes through that lens, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And you know, despite this, overall, he is pursuing a
pretty progressive agenda for a politician of his stature at
the time. He says, look, if you're a public employee,
we know the cost of living is rising. We've got
to pay you what you're worth. If you are a
(13:39):
child who is working, then you shouldn't work more than
forty eight hours, which we knew a week, which we
know sounds terrible now, but that was actually that was
a really good move on his part. He also did,
by the way, limit the work week for women in Massachusetts.
He said, there's too many billboards, there's too much advertise.
(14:00):
Let's calm that down. People liked it on both sides
of the political aisle. People were like, he gets it.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
There's a little something for everybody, you know, and the
kind of stuff he's doing. And so he continued to
advance in local politics and eventually went on to marry
Grace Anna Goodhue. That was on October fourth of nineteen
oh five at her parents' house in Burlington, Vermont. And
she was also a graduate of the Higher Education in
(14:27):
the University of Vermont, a Phi Beta Kappa member, and
was a teacher at the Clark Institute for the Deaf
in Northampton.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, and they've got a nice meet cute. I think
it's good for a rom com So Max, if we
could get some we get some rom calm music. I
leave it to you, sir. So Coolidge gets Grace's attention
one morning because she is walking through town in Northampton
(14:59):
and he was living a boarding house at the time,
and she walks through the streets. She happens to look
up and she sees an open window where there's this
guy standing. It is underwear, shaving and wearing a hat.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Was it a baseball cap? We don't know at this time, glistening,
you know, with shaving cream. It reminds me of like
the trope of like the sexy bare chest to construction
worker with a six pack drinking a diet coke on
a roof, but only way nerdier and schlubbier and less sexy.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I also think it's interesting that we don't know what
part of his body he was shaving. I mean, history
wants us to assume it was his face.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I'm going to come clean on something, y'all. I once,
when I was younger. I don't know why I shaved
my right thigh, or rather a calf, and I swear
to you the hair has never grown back to this day.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
A like Lee's story. Oh that's cool, man. I mean, swimmers, hey,
swimmers are some of the most physically fit people, and
they shave all the time. They got to get rid
of the friction. Okay, it wasn't love at first sight.
She thought he looked like a cartoon. And then she
(16:14):
go thawed, this was not a coquettish cover the mouth
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
This is like, are you okay?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And she could fowt as I was saying, and she
laughed long and loud enough for him to notice her,
and then she turned away. And he later like, when
they talk about this later, because they have a long relationship.
When they talk about this later, he tries to justify it,
(16:45):
and he says, well, I wear a hat when I'm
shaving because I get to keep my hair out of
my eyes.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That's respectable. Yeah, I'll buy that.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I do love this though, whenever you hear and I've
got a couple of friends who very similar story. He said,
I am going to be married to you one day.
I guess that was him actually proposed that. Yeah, that's true.
Maybe it's just a little different. But as a couple
of dear friends of mine who I've known for a
long time, who I knew separately, one of them said
(17:18):
was I'm going to marry that girl, And he definitely did,
which is so romantic.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Again, Rodic and Grace really dug this Calvin Coolidge vibe,
just like the populace of Massachusetts. She immediately said something
to the effect of, I imagine you have mistaken that for
a proposal, But yeah, dude, I'm in.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Al then you rogue.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So they have a kid. They have John in nineteen
oh six, and then in nineteen oh eight they have
Calvin Junior. The whole time, by the way, our buddy
Calvin Coolidge is pursuing his career in politics, and as
we know, he reaches some rarefied heights.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
He does, and it all really starts with his attending
the Republican National Convention in Chicago as the state's favorite
candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That's in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
He only got thirty four votes on the first ballot.
But then there was some you know how backroom deals,
especially back in the early days of politics, were really
the thing that elevated well, who am I kidding?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Of course, it's still that way today.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Was come on, I s to have any illusions, but
there were some of these deals going on that helped
ensure that Warren G. Harding was in fact nominated. We
already talked about Warren g All. Remember what happened with him?
He regulated, he did, he got regulated. Coolidge wasn't initially
(18:47):
part of the conversation to be his running mate. They
were hoping for a guy by the name of Irving
Linn Roots, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Honorable Senator Irving Lynn Roots.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'm we all remember that name, right, definitely Len Root
for life and and Coolidge name did get Coolidge's name
rather did get dropped into the ring. And then there
was some support that rallied around him from some delegates
that were sort of I think, kind of almost I
(19:21):
guess protesting in a way like yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Was more like they were voting against Len Roots. That's right,
and that's right in the larger context. Shout out to
our friends at Encyclopedia Britannica. In the larger context, Calvin
just keeps lucking out because he's on the ticket now,
as you said, in the nineteen twenty election is really
a question for America, and the question is do you
(19:45):
or do you not like President Woodrow Wilson. We know
our pal Max doesn't like Woodrow Wilson because he gave
Woodrow Wilson, the nickname dumb Dick.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Woodrow Wilson is the fucking worst?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Is you is?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Or is you ain't?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
My constitut See, well he's no Franklin Pierce, but a
few people yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
In my book, I mean she resegregated the national He
sure did.
Speaker 7 (20:09):
He was.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
He basically murdered Eugene V.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Debs.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh also uh oh Andrew Jackson as well. Look, the
presidents aren't perfect nor.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
As generally pretty bad.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
If you actually go put it, hold them up like
the wasn't the last one hundred plus a years look
a lot.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Better when you go back before nineteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
You gotta see there's a great stand up comic who's
really making a name for himself, Shane Gillis. You got
to see his bit on George Washington. It's amazing, and
visiting the Washing the Washington Museum anyway. So people aren't
surprised that Harding wins the election pretty easily. And part
of the reason he wins this pretty easily, to your point, Max,
(20:51):
is because Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the time,
and uh, and the status quo is against him. Republicans
are like, look, our boy Harding and Calvin. We guess
they win, and this means that we can reverse all
of the policies Woodrow Wilson made in the US, and
(21:12):
we can also get rid of all the international overtures
he made across the world.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
I love that about government changing hands, where it's like, hey,
let's do everything we can to wipe out what the
last people.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Did psyche other countries.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It seems really effective.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Faclks the number one reason that other countries don't trust
the United States.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
And thus begins one of the most corrupt, toward nasty
presidential terms in the history of the United States.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And that's where people start rightly saying that President Harding
is a very open to and vulnerable to corruption. This
really stresses Harding out. Historians speculate it may have been
a factor that led to his early death. He got
a heart attack in August of nineteen twenty three, and
(22:02):
so on August third, nineteen twenty three, at like two
point thirty in the morning, Calvin Coolidge gets the official
word that he is now President of the United States,
and he goes to his dad, because his dad.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Does the shop keep the humble shopkeeper from Vermont.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, his dad, like me, is a notary public and
so his dad's wait a humble brag. It's easy, you
should do it. It's fun. You get a stamp. So
his own father administers the oath of office, and Coolidge
takes his oath with the family Bible. It might seem weird,
(22:42):
and it might seem a little bit ad hoc, but
we have to remember then as now, there always has
to be a president as immediately as possible. So they
can't hold up to like travel outside of Vermont. They
can't schedule a day. It has to happen.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I think that's pretty dramatic. Honestly it is.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You know, in Coolidge again, he had a little something
for everybody. As he ascended to the role of the president,
he realized that there was some damage control that needed
to be done, you know, sort of rebrand this administration
to differentiate them from the corruption of the Harding administration. Yeah,
(23:25):
and really inherited kind of a pile of crap that
he had to mold into a beautiful sculpture.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I don't, okay do with that image, which it's.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
A real messy bowl of spaghetti. And he does have
to bring order out of this chaos and skullduggery. So
he's again a very tenacious guy. He's the kind of
guy who doesn't make a big to do. He just
does what he believes should be done. And so it
(23:53):
comes to pass, I'm saying, And so it comes to
pass a lot more often because I feel like that
raises our dramatic stakes. And so it comes to pass
that Coolidge one by one starts rooting out the sources
of corruption and making the executive branch of the US
government a model of integrity. And this is in his
(24:15):
own image. He says, Look, you know, America, we might
not agree on everything, but I will deal with you
and the fate of our nation in good faith. I
am someone you can trust.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And he also, you know, like I keep saying, he
kind of had a little something for everybody. He was
determined to maintain this sense of the old moral and
economic ways, not representing some sort of massive shift that
would freak people out, because America is actually doing pretty well.
(24:49):
And you know, one thing that freaks people out when
there's a new president coming in is like, are you
going to raise our taxes? Are you going to do
something that's going to affect my money. You know, I
never realized why politics becomes so much more important to
older people.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's because they're looking out for their money man.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And so it comes to pass. I'm not letting go
of it. It comes to pass that Coolidge has to
explore some of his own moral boundaries. He says, We're
not going to use the economic power the federal government
to stop this boom. We're not going to likewise ameliorate
the depressed condition of certain industries. We're going to treat
(25:29):
everybody equally. And so his first message to Congress December
nineteen twenty three, it's a very weird year for him.
He says, we're going to be more isolationist in our
foreign policy. We're going to cut taxes, We're going to
provide some limited aid to farmers and humble farmers. Humble farmers,
guys check out Rebel Moon. It's important to realize that
(25:52):
one guy's a humble farmer. And so it's.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Literally all I know about the movie, right right, It's
an important point that occurs every ten minute.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But the thing is, these moves are incredibly popular throughout
the United States because no one knows the Great Depression
is on the way.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So with Coolidge kind of representing the strong arm of
justice and the antithesis of the corruption of what the
Harding administration came to be represented, as he also brought
with him this kind of return to a more conservative
fiscal policy that has been I believe is still I mean,
(26:32):
who knows these days, that sort of the foundation of
what the Republican Party went on to sort of evolve into.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, Coolidge also again is functioning as a thing to
be held up in contrast to political opponents. Because the
Democratic Party then was not the Democratic Party of today.
The ku Klux Klan had a lot of influence in them.
And so in the election nineteen twenty four, Coolidge wins
(27:02):
by a huge margin. He gets like three hundred and
eighty two electoral votes. The Democratic candidate John W. Davis
only gets one hundred and thirty six. And they kept
the same They kept the same idea all throughout this presidency,
the idea that this was a guy who would hear
you out. This guy was steady, he was an anchor
(27:25):
for America. He would keep calm. They used the slogan
keep it cool with Coolidge, get it in nineteen twenty
four and nol. You brought up a great point off
off Mike. We've talked so much about this guy's physical
and social kind of like his vibe. So you found
(27:46):
a great clip for us to play of the actual
Calvin Coolidge, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
It's great.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
It's DeForest Funo Films Present President Coolidge, taken on the
White House grounds. This would be the kind of thing
would probably be played before the feature, you know, in
a movie house, like the newsreels or whatever. But I
love the framing and this whole like production sort of plate,
I guess at the beginning of it.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, he's he's humble, he's got a pince nez, he's
he's holding his notes, and we're just gonna play a
quick clip from nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
Costs of government are all assessed upon the people. This
means that the palmer is doomed to provide a certain
amount of out of the sale of his no matter
how low the price, to pay his taxes. The manufacturer,
the professional.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Man he's going through his notes, cret.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
Must do the same from their incomes, often the higher
right when compared with his earning.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I'm falling asleep, guys, I think we can stop Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well, the funny thing, I mean, this, what he's talking
about out here directly pertains to, you know, the policies
that we're talking about. But also, wow, this guy roasted
his senior class again.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, the dogs. I can handle a roast from this guy.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
He's a he is doing though. I love that example
because he is speaking to particular demographics of the United
States and he is saying, look, I get it this,
the the government could be better to farmers things like that. Right,
He's speaking directly to the people, and this is tremendously reassuring.
(29:41):
We could argue to the American public. But when he
said this, uh, he also he was not He was
not a fan of like impulsive radical decisions. And our
boy loved a veto He vetoed so much stuff all
the time. He vetoed fifty bills. I think in two
(30:02):
of those, by the way, were far we're relief for
farmers bills, right, I mean, he was shrewd.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
You know, this seems to go back to what his
pappy taught him back in the old home front, you know,
keeping keeping the family store. This idea of prudence you know,
with money, and of being a good steward of Resources.
Walter Lippman, journalist and media critic, and also he is
listed as an amateur philosopher, which I'd like to think
(30:30):
we all are. Walter Lippman had this to say. He
actually refers to President Coolidge as having a sort of
political genius, and he says this active inactivity suits the
mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably.
It suits all the business interests which want to be
let alone, and it suits all those who have become
(30:51):
convinced that the government in this country has become dangerously
complicated and top heavy.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Small government.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Small government, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Also the art of frantically and importantly doing nothing, which.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Activity we've seen. We see this of that.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So this is where he starts to get famous. He
starts to get known for his taciturn nature, his his
lack of verbosity. Coolidge is seen as a kind of remote,
negative president, but at the same time he's seen as
(31:31):
the most accessible because he will go to an interview
with you, he just won't expound very much outside of
his like scheduled White House law and speeches or talks
with Congress. He's like, uh, what is it? Uh, He's
in an interview. He's not I'll get to another noted
uh literary man of the day, Bernard Barouche, and he says,
(31:54):
look a lot of times I'll be in these interviews
and I'll just sit through them. He specifically said, well,
my rooch, many times I say only yes or no
two people even not just too much. It wigns them
up for twenty minutes. More so, he's basically he's like saying, look,
if I give these folks anything, they just keep going.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
They're like a dog with the bone.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
It reminds me of when people ask David Lynch about
the meaning of his films or like specifically a raser Head,
where he's just like, no.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I'm not going to tell you. What do you what
do your stuff?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
What do you think about the music in your films?
David like, well, I do, I do think about it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, it's very important. I like Red Kurtains, I love
album David Lynch Show. I like his album too, Crazy
Clown Down, Crazy Clown Time.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So we mentioned how he gets the nickname Silent Cal.
It's it goes back to of course, that Washington DC hostess.
She's a socialite, and she says, oh, you must talk
to me, mister President, I made a bet today that
I could get both in two words out of you,
and Coolidge replies, you lose. So his policies, though, I
(33:10):
think this gives you a hard time to Max. His
policies are conservative. He is very pro business. He is
very much not a Eugene V.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Debs.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
And there is something impressive, low key impressive for his
international policy because the Coolidge administration is not rocking a
lot of tectonic plates or cultural boundaries, but they are
pretty competent in terms of what best benefits the people
(33:42):
of America. They're focusing on internal growth. They are, perhaps
you could argue a bit too isolationists in different places,
Like Calvin Coolidge says, no way are we joining the
League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations. He's like,
I'm an American president. Beat me here, Max, I do
(34:03):
shit for Americans. Oh and we should mention that he
did have a vice president as well, Charles G.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Dawes. It's right, does what we had to say about Dawes.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
He received the Nobel Prize for helping Germany.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Oh that's cool, I like that, Gon, Max. What else
did this? Dawes fellow do so.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Dawes actually because they were not involved in international stuff,
but when they did, they were actually good at it.
Dawes helped Germany meet its war debt obligations, you remember,
they're paying everybody off.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Which were huge and indeed part of the economic factor
leading to World War two.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Ultimately, yeah, great depression than World War two. Uh So
he helped with that. And they also had this guy
named Secretary of State, actually Frank B. Kellogg, who was
very influential in this pack called the Kellogg Brand packed.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
We figured out how to stay.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
At one point because we have a we have an
episode about this is we do. It's titled something along
the lines of when they outlawed war, So basically it
outlawed this we're taking your land type of war, which
is still you know now, whenever countries go to war,
they come up with some fake reason, like Russia has with.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Ukraine that time everyone tried to outlaw war. January sixth,
twenty twenty two. Complete coincidence. So no presidency lasts forever
by design, you know. And you can look to the
Administration of FDR to see why that can become unpopular
(35:36):
and dangerous. So let's go to nineteen twenty eight. Our boy,
our boy, the cool cat Cow is pretty popular still,
you know, some warts, some bumps along the way, but
he's up for reelection, and there is no law at
this time that limits the amount of times you can
(35:56):
run for president. There was sort of what we could
call I hate to use this phrase, but there was
like a gentleman's agreement or house rule of US politics
that you should only run for president twice.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Is that more of like a, like you said, like
a decorum thing at this point?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah? Yeah, okay, gotcha, gotcha. But now it's official. Good,
Now it's super efficial. Yeah, it's good. I'm glad, Thank god,
thank god.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
And he could have run again if he had wanted to,
based on that sort of social norm of the time,
but he just was kind of done with it. I
think he'd felt like he had accomplished all he'd wanted
to do and wanted to maybe step out of the
public eye for a while.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, and going back to that excellent work by David Greenberg,
we know this. He was pretty low key and abrupt
with his announcement. He said, look, I'm not going to
seek reelection. With one statement, I do not choose to
run for president in nineteen twenty eight. The first people
to find out about this are reporters who are traveling
(36:59):
with him during his summer vacation in nineteen twenty seven,
and he just gets He doesn't even publicly say it.
He hands it to them on little strips of paper.
It's like he gave them a very specific and weird
fortune cookie. And so people like the word spreads, and people,
including his family members, have no idea what's going on.
(37:21):
Someone asks his wife Grace, what she thinks about the announcement,
and she goes, what announcement? And there's one story, a
little bit saucy. We don't know if it's totally true,
but according to one kind of cinematic story, he hands
these reporters these slips of paper and then immediately kid
you not, hops in a row boat and starts rowing
(37:42):
a way before they can say anything, Row row, row
your boat.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
That's how I was taught this story in APUs history,
and I.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Humble brag I learned it from my ap teacher. But
she said, she said, I'm telling you the version of
the story that I like.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
I'm gonna say it right now. Considering this guy He
was actually pretty into physical fitness too.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
He would like swim naked and stuff.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Yeah, him rolling away in a boat would seem like
something very relaxing to him.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
It's like a slow fade, man. It's like Homer disappearing
backwards into the bushes.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It feels like Wes Anderson has made this film.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It just takes so long to get You see them
for so long on the horizon, you know, it's like
slowly backing away.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
I like that. I like this Calvin Coolidge's vibe.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
And so Calvin Coolidge kind of retires from public life
sort of because he writes an autobiography. He writes articles
for magazines of note. He has a nationally syndicated column
for a newspaper for a while called Thinking Things Over
with Calvin Coolidge, because he's at that point in his
career where he feels like he has to put his
(38:53):
name in the title of everything. Anyway, I walked down
the street from that one. He lives his life until
January fifth, nineteen thirty three. It's just after lunch. He
usually takes a two hour nap after lunch at this
time in his life, but on January fifth, he collapsed
he collapses in his bedroom and later doctors conclude he
(39:17):
has died from heart failure. His passing comes right before
the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, as I mentioned,
is the reason we have hard limits on presidential terms
in the modern day. But we didn't want to end
on a total down note. So instead of closing with
(39:38):
that cinematic look at his row boating career to syndicate
a columnists switch, we've got to tell you about his
presidential pets, because we did an episode on this, and
this had to have appeared in that episode, right. He
loved dogs and cats.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
He had several by the name of Climber, Tiger and Blackie,
which is maybe a little bit problematic now, but it
is what it is. I'm not sure which was the
dogg or which was the cat in that in that trio.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
I know you didn't name the dog tiger.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You know what tiger makes sense for the cat.
Speaker 6 (40:10):
I don't know what this guy's this guy's sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Though I know he's a swing I get it.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
But he also had birds.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Uh And most importantly and delightfully, if you're a fan
of something that the internet just gives beautifully now is
raccoon content?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
He had a raccoon named Rebecca.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I think I personally, yeah, I follow like six different
raccoon Instagram accounts. They got human hands man. It's weird,
but also it's also cute. He got lion cubs too,
that's wild lion cubs. He got those as a gift
actually from the Mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the
White House named the Cubs. I guess they sort of
(40:51):
were almost like soft ambassadors, named the Cubs Budget Bureau
and tax Reduction.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
All right, well, not every joke is going to land.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
They probably called him Budgie and Taxi, you know, a
pet names were.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
But he also had his sort of flagship pet, which
was a Collie by the name of Rob Roy, which
was a historical war hero I believe in Scotland, the
inventor of dubstep. Okay, fair enough, but also a delightful cocktail. Rebecca,
the raccoon, though, was less of Calvin's Special Guy and
(41:25):
more of Grace's. In fact, you can find a lot
of photos of them posing together at the White House.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Very domesticated, so much so that one day the Coolidge
family said, we should get Rebecca a friend. Let's get
her another raccoon. We'll name it Ruben. Get it a literation.
They're cute. However, Ruben was much less domesticated and much
more He's more of a street raccoon, you know what
I mean. He was for the streets, he was for
(41:51):
the dumpsters.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
But this is for history.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
This is a pretty good look at Calvin Coolidge. There's
a lot of stuff we didn't get to, which I
think will show up in one of our forthcoming episodes,
stuff that got left over.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
We love it. Yeah, well, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
And also in the meantime, if you want to read
more about his life following suit with his kind of
soft spoken demeanor. His autobiography is I believe, one of
the shortest and presidential history.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, it's a series of haiku. It is actually super short.
But again a man of few words, the words he
chose did have tremendous impact even today in twenty twenty four,
I almost said, twenty twenty three, Oh geez, when did
we start this show? What was it twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
I guess that's right. We talked about that the other day.
We've been doing this for over what's five six years.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Later? This year will be years seven years. Yeah, Oh,
the fingers.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Bargain, the Faustian bargains, come and do. Shout out to
anybody who gets that weird joke. I just want to
say the time has flown. So grateful to all or
ridiculous historians and Noel Max, I'm so grateful to you.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
We were talking about this a little bit off air,
but this is just one of my favorite things to do,
and we hope you enjoy it as well. Folks.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Oh, the feeling is mutual.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I can definitely speak for both myself and Max. Even
though Max occasionally does a face palm, I think they're
good natured face palms, and these face palming out of love.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I always like to think maybe his hand just smells
really good.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
It's possible, especially the cast hands, especially of getting a
little ripe. But no, truly I feel the exact same way.
I love you both to death and I can't wait
till we reconvene. I was thinking this might be a
two parter, but I think we we we in the
spirit of Calvin himself, exercise the spirit of brevity, and
(43:48):
that is so appreciate that. Yeah, a little longer for
a one partner, but I think that there was no
other way to do.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
We had a lot of stuff to do.
Speaker 5 (43:55):
I joked beforehand, and I'm like, I think ed an
episode about Calvin Coolidge.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
We should make sure to go along on it.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, and also, you know how it is you got
to kill your darlings. I am chock full of dumb
facts about baseball hats. I'm hoping they'll fade bye by
the time we record our next episode. Big Big thanks
to superproducer and research associate for this episode, mister Max
Williams Alex Williams, real life brother of the show and
(44:23):
biological brother of Alex, who composed this slap and bop.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Thanks to Chris frostiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeffcoach, the
whole pantheon of ridiculous historians that came before.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
We hope you guys have a really great weekend and life.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer, mister
Max Williams. Shout out to another guy, a very cool cat,
who is in fact following up on a pop quiz
for our Ridiculous Historians tuning in earlier this week. Calvin
(00:47):
Coolidge was not, in fact the basis of Calvinism. There
are a lot of people named Calvin in the world.
And know all you pointed out, Calvin Clyde, You're no Brown,
I'm ben Bowling. But out of all the US presidents
named Calvin, this guy is automatically the coolest.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And as of the recording of this podcast, forty five
individual human people have held the position of president of
these United States. And Max pointed out that there might
be some personnikity listeners that would say, hey, Max, what's
the deal? There have been forty six presidents. You have
to remember, fair listeners, that Grover.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Cleveland was both the twenty second and the twenty fourth president.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
And there are the facts.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, there we go. And there were a lot of
also rants in Potus history. That's just the acronym president
of the United States. One person who gets a lot
of heat is a president named Warren G. Harding. Hang on, Ben,
you might be saying, why are we talking about Harding?
(02:14):
You just made such a big deal about a president
named Calvin Well. That's because Warren G. Harding, Warren G.
Warren G.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was the regulator.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yep, he's the first one. Warren G. Gets elected president.
We're abbreviating a lot of this. Here's what you need
to know. Warren G. Becomes president, he is unfortunately unable
to complete his term of office. He passes away while
he's president in nineteen twenty three. And this means that
(02:46):
his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, automatically becomes commander in chief,
the thirtieth president in the history of the United States.
And you know, I love credit. I love shouting out
our research associates. Credit to Max Williams for this beautiful
turn of phrase. Here what would ensue would arguably be
(03:09):
the call mist boringist presidency in the history of America,
but also somehow the most hilarious and ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Dare we say so?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It's very important to shout out our research associates, and
in today's episode, we're going to dive into the history
of a guy who had a street name as President
Silent Cal.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And this is not like one of the classic opposite
day nicknames like Little John, not the rapper, but the
member of the Robin Hood, Mary Band or.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know what was it. There was actually someone in history.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I know what it was. It was in Skyrim. There
is an orphanage in riftin I believe that is run
by this sort of miss Hannigan type figure. I can't
remember her name, but when you talk to one of
the NPC's when you go in and hear her beating
the child and saying, how you gotta snipes, will never
be adopted ever, you're mine, And they say, the nice
(04:06):
kind lady that works there tells you, yeah, people around
town call her kind Margaret or something loved.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
The kind.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Boiler certainly on the Brotherhood also haven't gone. I did
immediately want to murder her. But Silent Cal was in
fact quite a laconic figure, the one that definitely wouldn't
talk unless he had something to say.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Favorite mentioned this on the on the air in a
previous episode, so got to give credit where its to.
My favorite Talvin Coolidge anecdote is one time someone came
up to him and said, because he's so famously taciturn,
they came up to him and said, I bet I
could get three words out of you, and our buddy
(04:54):
cal looked around, looked at the person, and then said,
you lose.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Ooh, James set match match whatever. Yeah, Calvin, what a guy.
Let's learn more about him, though, Let's do it. David Greenberg,
writer of Calvin Coolidge Life before the Presidency for the
University of Virginia's Miller Center, had this to say. Coolidge
was born John Calvin Coolidge Junior on July fourth, eighteen
(05:21):
seventy two, in Plymouth.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Notch, Vermont.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
He grew up helping his storekeeper father tend to the accounts,
selling apples, and doing other chores around the store at
home on the family farm. As a boy, Coolidge had
little ambition in life beyond hoping to follow his father
as a good.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Honest, small town merchant.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
In the original course of research here, I had initially
misread that that passage as Calvin Coolidge grew up helping
his storekeeper father to tend apples and sell accounts, which is.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You know, sketchy selling it well maybe yeah the time.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So anyway, yeah, let's let's learn about the patter familias here.
The senior Coolidge is a kind of hard nosed guy.
He's a pillar of the community, upstanding dude, probably not
a ton of fun at parties. But he's also active
in local government. He's in the Vermont's House Representatives, he
(06:21):
serves a term in the Senate of Vermont. And he
also he's one of those guys who is continually in
local office, like one of my kind of sketchy uncles. Sorry,
Uncle Sam.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Isn't Bernie Sanders from Vermont?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Isn't that Sanders? Yeah, Sanders is a Vermont guy.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
It just strikes me as a place that breeds level
headed individuals.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Maybe it's it's beautiful in autumn. Go if you get
a chance, people drive up there just to see the leaves.
So everybody says, all right, this guy Coolidge is he
he's not a wild Coolidge, the elder patter familius. Again,
he's not a wild man. You know. You see, some
(07:06):
years he's the peace officer, some years he's the tax collector.
But he is good at his job. He's good at
running his store, he's thrifty, he's also a farmer, and
he's got this sort of solidity to him. He is
an anchor for the town and he's committed to public service.
And this is something that we know young Calvin aspired to.
(07:29):
He really looked up to his father on miny levels.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, for sure, and he also appreciated how good he
was with money. And I love how David Greenberg describes
the younger Coolidge in terms of his academic pursuits. He
described him as a fair to average student in the
Plymouth Elementary school, and he did manage to make good
enough grades to get into Amherst College, which was considered,
(07:55):
you know, prestigious at the time. So he must have
worked hard because if if he's considering him a fair
to average student he's getting into a prestigious university, that
probably means he had to bust his butt to like
keep those grades up and that it was important to him.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
He wasn't just naturally a whiz, you know in school.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Sure, yeah, he is not necessarily the most precocious student,
but he does understand the value of study and hard work.
He gets excellent grades in his last two years at
Amherst College. He graduates with honors in fact cum laude,
and he becomes a member of the Republican Club and
(08:34):
the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. He also gets He also
gets known for his dry wit, and I love that
he was lauded for his public speaking skills. He actually
got the junior prize in oratory competitions, which is just like,
who is the best at talking in front of more
(08:54):
than four people?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, and it's funny.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I mean, when you think about his reputation as being
somewhat taciturn, it is kind of funny that he was
the one who was brought up to host sort of
like a roast kind of situation of the graduating class.
I just I don't know I can possibly even attempt
to do it. I'm just not funny enough. But I
would love to see a sketch where someone did like
a stand up comedy set presented by Calvin Coolidge. It'd
(09:19):
probably be something along the lines of like Joe Para,
you know, very monotone, kind of meadow, kind of string
of dad jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I'm just picturing this. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
He also, in addition to that, and obviously that's a
pitch for his upcoming podcast. He also got first prize
for his essay The Principles Fought for in the American Revolution.
He eventually goes to Northampton, Massachusetts, where he reads law
in a law firm. He passes the bar in the
(09:50):
summer of eighteen ninety seven. One big thing about the
United States versus a lot of other powerful countries is
that many US press scidents have their background in the
world of law, in the world of litigation. You can
look at other countries where many leaders have their background
in engineering stuff like that. It's just it's a cultural
(10:12):
fun fact. He opens a law office, and if you
own a law office in the late eighteen hundreds, guess what.
You also participate in local politics. And that's what Calvin does.
Following I would argue in his father's footsteps.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
And Coolidge's sort of ascension into political life was very
measured and it was just kind of like slow and
steady wins the race. And around nineteen hundred he started
to do some work with the local Republican Club in Northampton,
and this ultimately led to him getting a place on
(10:50):
the city council.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
So in his ascension he becomes Lieutenant governor in nineteen sixteen.
He holds that role for two years, and then he
gets some national press because he runs for the position
of governor of Massachusetts and he barely wins. He just
edges out the Democratic candidate, Richard H. Long, and so
(11:14):
now the eyes of the world and probably people in
Congress are upon him. And this is fratuitous timing because
the Republican Party, as we know, returns to power at
the end of World War One. And then also he
does some things that remain controversial to some. He gets
(11:38):
a lot of press across the nation when he calls
on the National Guard of Massachusetts to break a strike
by the Boston City Police, and then he says, there
is no right to strike against the public safety by
anybody anywhere anytime.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
We don't like that. That's not great.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
This was seen historically, you know, upon further analysis, is
something of a reactionary move, but it was actually pretty
popular at the time because labor sentiment pro labor sentiment
was not necessarily what it is today.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I guess it's still a little.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Bit complicated for some people, but at the time it
certainly wasn't, you know, considered like the position of the
you know, moral individual, the moral citizen, that workers deserve
to be treated with respect, and it got him some
pretty serious support.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
I do want to jump in here though, and say, like,
there was actually an extensive writing I found while researching
this that said Coolidge kind of regretted doing this in
the future because he was up despite like, you know,
he was a Republican, he was a fisical conservative, but
he was actually a pretty progressive dude, and he would
look back like, I shouldn't have done that, but because
it's like, you know, the cops are striking, but also
you know, you shouldn't send the National Guard into break
(12:57):
a strike.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, yeah, I mean there was a sense I think
maybe it wasn't so much about like the public at
large being anti labor, but the results of these types
of strikes were lawlessness, or at least we're seeing as lawlessness,
and I think the general population was like looking at
strikes through that lens, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And you know, despite this, overall, he is pursuing a
pretty progressive agenda for a politician of his stature at
the time. He says, look, if you're a public employee,
we know the cost of living is rising. We've got
to pay you what you're worth. If you are a
(13:39):
child who is working, then you shouldn't work more than
forty eight hours, which we knew a week, which we
know sounds terrible now, but that was actually that was
a really good move on his part. He also did,
by the way, limit the work week for women in Massachusetts.
He said, there's too many billboards, there's too much advertise.
(14:00):
Let's calm that down. People liked it on both sides
of the political aisle. People were like, he gets it.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
There's a little something for everybody, you know, and the
kind of stuff he's doing. And so he continued to
advance in local politics and eventually went on to marry
Grace Anna Goodhue. That was on October fourth of nineteen
oh five at her parents' house in Burlington, Vermont. And
she was also a graduate of the Higher Education in
(14:27):
the University of Vermont, a Phi Beta Kappa member, and
was a teacher at the Clark Institute for the Deaf
in Northampton.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah, and they've got a nice meet cute. I think
it's good for a rom com So Max, if we
could get some we get some rom calm music. I
leave it to you, sir. So Coolidge gets Grace's attention
one morning because she is walking through town in Northampton
(14:59):
and he was living a boarding house at the time,
and she walks through the streets. She happens to look
up and she sees an open window where there's this
guy standing. It is underwear, shaving and wearing a hat.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Was it a baseball cap? We don't know at this time, glistening,
you know, with shaving cream. It reminds me of like
the trope of like the sexy bare chest to construction
worker with a six pack drinking a diet coke on
a roof, but only way nerdier and schlubbier and less sexy.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I also think it's interesting that we don't know what
part of his body he was shaving. I mean, history
wants us to assume it was his face.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I'm going to come clean on something, y'all. I once,
when I was younger. I don't know why I shaved
my right thigh, or rather a calf, and I swear
to you the hair has never grown back to this day.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
A like Lee's story. Oh that's cool, man. I mean, swimmers, hey,
swimmers are some of the most physically fit people, and
they shave all the time. They got to get rid
of the friction. Okay, it wasn't love at first sight.
She thought he looked like a cartoon. And then she
(16:14):
go thawed, this was not a coquettish cover the mouth
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
This is like, are you okay?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And she could fowt as I was saying, and she
laughed long and loud enough for him to notice her,
and then she turned away. And he later like, when
they talk about this later, because they have a long relationship.
When they talk about this later, he tries to justify it,
(16:45):
and he says, well, I wear a hat when I'm
shaving because I get to keep my hair out of
my eyes.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That's respectable. Yeah, I'll buy that.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I do love this though, whenever you hear and I've
got a couple of friends who very similar story. He said,
I am going to be married to you one day.
I guess that was him actually proposed that. Yeah, that's true.
Maybe it's just a little different. But as a couple
of dear friends of mine who I've known for a
long time, who I knew separately, one of them said
(17:18):
was I'm going to marry that girl, And he definitely did,
which is so romantic.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Again, Rodic and Grace really dug this Calvin Coolidge vibe,
just like the populace of Massachusetts. She immediately said something
to the effect of, I imagine you have mistaken that for
a proposal, But yeah, dude, I'm in.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Al then you rogue.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
So they have a kid. They have John in nineteen
oh six, and then in nineteen oh eight they have
Calvin Junior. The whole time, by the way, our buddy
Calvin Coolidge is pursuing his career in politics, and as
we know, he reaches some rarefied heights.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
He does, and it all really starts with his attending
the Republican National Convention in Chicago as the state's favorite
candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That's in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
He only got thirty four votes on the first ballot.
But then there was some you know how backroom deals,
especially back in the early days of politics, were really
the thing that elevated well, who am I kidding?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Of course, it's still that way today.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Was come on, I s to have any illusions, but
there were some of these deals going on that helped
ensure that Warren G. Harding was in fact nominated. We
already talked about Warren g All. Remember what happened with him?
He regulated, he did, he got regulated. Coolidge wasn't initially
(18:47):
part of the conversation to be his running mate. They
were hoping for a guy by the name of Irving
Linn Roots, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Honorable Senator Irving Lynn Roots.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'm we all remember that name, right, definitely Len Root
for life and and Coolidge name did get Coolidge's name
rather did get dropped into the ring. And then there
was some support that rallied around him from some delegates
that were sort of I think, kind of almost I
(19:21):
guess protesting in a way like yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Was more like they were voting against Len Roots. That's right,
and that's right in the larger context. Shout out to
our friends at Encyclopedia Britannica. In the larger context, Calvin
just keeps lucking out because he's on the ticket now,
as you said, in the nineteen twenty election is really
a question for America, and the question is do you
(19:45):
or do you not like President Woodrow Wilson. We know
our pal Max doesn't like Woodrow Wilson because he gave
Woodrow Wilson, the nickname dumb Dick.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Woodrow Wilson is the fucking worst?
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Is you is?
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Or is you ain't?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
My constitut See, well he's no Franklin Pierce, but a
few people yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
In my book, I mean she resegregated the national He
sure did.
Speaker 7 (20:09):
He was.
Speaker 6 (20:09):
He basically murdered Eugene V.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Debs.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh also uh oh Andrew Jackson as well. Look, the
presidents aren't perfect nor.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
As generally pretty bad.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
If you actually go put it, hold them up like
the wasn't the last one hundred plus a years look
a lot.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Better when you go back before nineteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
You gotta see there's a great stand up comic who's
really making a name for himself, Shane Gillis. You got
to see his bit on George Washington. It's amazing, and
visiting the Washing the Washington Museum anyway. So people aren't
surprised that Harding wins the election pretty easily. And part
of the reason he wins this pretty easily, to your point, Max,
(20:51):
is because Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the time,
and uh, and the status quo is against him. Republicans
are like, look, our boy Harding and Calvin. We guess
they win, and this means that we can reverse all
of the policies Woodrow Wilson made in the US, and
(21:12):
we can also get rid of all the international overtures
he made across the world.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
I love that about government changing hands, where it's like, hey,
let's do everything we can to wipe out what the
last people.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Did psyche other countries.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
It seems really effective.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Faclks the number one reason that other countries don't trust
the United States.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
And thus begins one of the most corrupt, toward nasty
presidential terms in the history of the United States.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And that's where people start rightly saying that President Harding
is a very open to and vulnerable to corruption. This
really stresses Harding out. Historians speculate it may have been
a factor that led to his early death. He got
a heart attack in August of nineteen twenty three, and
(22:02):
so on August third, nineteen twenty three, at like two
point thirty in the morning, Calvin Coolidge gets the official
word that he is now President of the United States,
and he goes to his dad, because his dad.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Does the shop keep the humble shopkeeper from Vermont.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, his dad, like me, is a notary public and
so his dad's wait a humble brag. It's easy, you
should do it. It's fun. You get a stamp. So
his own father administers the oath of office, and Coolidge
takes his oath with the family Bible. It might seem weird,
(22:42):
and it might seem a little bit ad hoc, but
we have to remember then as now, there always has
to be a president as immediately as possible. So they
can't hold up to like travel outside of Vermont. They
can't schedule a day. It has to happen.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I think that's pretty dramatic. Honestly it is.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You know, in Coolidge again, he had a little something
for everybody. As he ascended to the role of the president,
he realized that there was some damage control that needed
to be done, you know, sort of rebrand this administration
to differentiate them from the corruption of the Harding administration. Yeah,
(23:25):
and really inherited kind of a pile of crap that
he had to mold into a beautiful sculpture.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I don't, okay do with that image, which it's.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
A real messy bowl of spaghetti. And he does have
to bring order out of this chaos and skullduggery. So
he's again a very tenacious guy. He's the kind of
guy who doesn't make a big to do. He just
does what he believes should be done. And so it
(23:53):
comes to pass, I'm saying, And so it comes to
pass a lot more often because I feel like that
raises our dramatic stakes. And so it comes to pass
that Coolidge one by one starts rooting out the sources
of corruption and making the executive branch of the US
government a model of integrity. And this is in his
(24:15):
own image. He says, Look, you know, America, we might
not agree on everything, but I will deal with you
and the fate of our nation in good faith. I
am someone you can trust.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
And he also, you know, like I keep saying, he
kind of had a little something for everybody. He was
determined to maintain this sense of the old moral and
economic ways, not representing some sort of massive shift that
would freak people out, because America is actually doing pretty well.
(24:49):
And you know, one thing that freaks people out when
there's a new president coming in is like, are you
going to raise our taxes? Are you going to do
something that's going to affect my money. You know, I
never realized why politics becomes so much more important to
older people.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's because they're looking out for their money man.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And so it comes to pass. I'm not letting go
of it. It comes to pass that Coolidge has to
explore some of his own moral boundaries. He says, We're
not going to use the economic power the federal government
to stop this boom. We're not going to likewise ameliorate
the depressed condition of certain industries. We're going to treat
(25:29):
everybody equally. And so his first message to Congress December
nineteen twenty three, it's a very weird year for him.
He says, we're going to be more isolationist in our
foreign policy. We're going to cut taxes, We're going to
provide some limited aid to farmers and humble farmers. Humble farmers,
guys check out Rebel Moon. It's important to realize that
(25:52):
one guy's a humble farmer. And so it's.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Literally all I know about the movie, right right, It's
an important point that occurs every ten minute.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
But the thing is, these moves are incredibly popular throughout
the United States because no one knows the Great Depression
is on the way.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
So with Coolidge kind of representing the strong arm of
justice and the antithesis of the corruption of what the
Harding administration came to be represented, as he also brought
with him this kind of return to a more conservative
fiscal policy that has been I believe is still I mean,
(26:32):
who knows these days, that sort of the foundation of
what the Republican Party went on to sort of evolve into.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, Coolidge also again is functioning as a thing to
be held up in contrast to political opponents. Because the
Democratic Party then was not the Democratic Party of today.
The ku Klux Klan had a lot of influence in them.
And so in the election nineteen twenty four, Coolidge wins
(27:02):
by a huge margin. He gets like three hundred and
eighty two electoral votes. The Democratic candidate John W. Davis
only gets one hundred and thirty six. And they kept
the same They kept the same idea all throughout this presidency,
the idea that this was a guy who would hear
you out. This guy was steady, he was an anchor
(27:25):
for America. He would keep calm. They used the slogan
keep it cool with Coolidge, get it in nineteen twenty
four and nol. You brought up a great point off
off Mike. We've talked so much about this guy's physical
and social kind of like his vibe. So you found
(27:46):
a great clip for us to play of the actual
Calvin Coolidge, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
It's great.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
It's DeForest Funo Films Present President Coolidge, taken on the
White House grounds. This would be the kind of thing
would probably be played before the feature, you know, in
a movie house, like the newsreels or whatever. But I
love the framing and this whole like production sort of plate,
I guess at the beginning of it.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Yeah, he's he's humble, he's got a pince nez, he's
he's holding his notes, and we're just gonna play a
quick clip from nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
Costs of government are all assessed upon the people. This
means that the palmer is doomed to provide a certain
amount of out of the sale of his no matter
how low the price, to pay his taxes. The manufacturer,
the professional.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Man he's going through his notes, cret.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
Must do the same from their incomes, often the higher
right when compared with his earning.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I'm falling asleep, guys, I think we can stop Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well, the funny thing, I mean, this, what he's talking
about out here directly pertains to, you know, the policies
that we're talking about. But also, wow, this guy roasted
his senior class again.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, the dogs. I can handle a roast from this guy.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
He's a he is doing though. I love that example
because he is speaking to particular demographics of the United
States and he is saying, look, I get it this,
the the government could be better to farmers things like that. Right,
He's speaking directly to the people, and this is tremendously reassuring.
(29:41):
We could argue to the American public. But when he
said this, uh, he also he was not He was
not a fan of like impulsive radical decisions. And our
boy loved a veto He vetoed so much stuff all
the time. He vetoed fifty bills. I think in two
(30:02):
of those, by the way, were far we're relief for
farmers bills, right, I mean, he was shrewd.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
You know, this seems to go back to what his
pappy taught him back in the old home front, you know,
keeping keeping the family store. This idea of prudence you know,
with money, and of being a good steward of Resources.
Walter Lippman, journalist and media critic, and also he is
listed as an amateur philosopher, which I'd like to think
(30:30):
we all are. Walter Lippman had this to say. He
actually refers to President Coolidge as having a sort of
political genius, and he says this active inactivity suits the
mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably.
It suits all the business interests which want to be
let alone, and it suits all those who have become
(30:51):
convinced that the government in this country has become dangerously
complicated and top heavy.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Small government.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Small government, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Also the art of frantically and importantly doing nothing, which.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Activity we've seen. We see this of that.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So this is where he starts to get famous. He
starts to get known for his taciturn nature, his his
lack of verbosity. Coolidge is seen as a kind of remote,
negative president, but at the same time he's seen as
(31:31):
the most accessible because he will go to an interview
with you, he just won't expound very much outside of
his like scheduled White House law and speeches or talks
with Congress. He's like, uh, what is it? Uh, He's
in an interview. He's not I'll get to another noted
uh literary man of the day, Bernard Barouche, and he says,
(31:54):
look a lot of times I'll be in these interviews
and I'll just sit through them. He specifically said, well,
my rooch, many times I say only yes or no
two people even not just too much. It wigns them
up for twenty minutes. More so, he's basically he's like saying, look,
if I give these folks anything, they just keep going.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
They're like a dog with the bone.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
It reminds me of when people ask David Lynch about
the meaning of his films or like specifically a raser Head,
where he's just like, no.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I'm not going to tell you. What do you what
do your stuff?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
What do you think about the music in your films?
David like, well, I do, I do think about it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, it's very important. I like Red Kurtains, I love
album David Lynch Show. I like his album too, Crazy
Clown Down, Crazy Clown Time.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
So we mentioned how he gets the nickname Silent Cal.
It's it goes back to of course, that Washington DC hostess.
She's a socialite, and she says, oh, you must talk
to me, mister President, I made a bet today that
I could get both in two words out of you,
and Coolidge replies, you lose. So his policies, though, I
(33:10):
think this gives you a hard time to Max. His
policies are conservative. He is very pro business. He is
very much not a Eugene V.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Debs.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
And there is something impressive, low key impressive for his
international policy because the Coolidge administration is not rocking a
lot of tectonic plates or cultural boundaries, but they are
pretty competent in terms of what best benefits the people
(33:42):
of America. They're focusing on internal growth. They are, perhaps
you could argue a bit too isolationists in different places,
Like Calvin Coolidge says, no way are we joining the
League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations. He's like,
I'm an American president. Beat me here, Max, I do
(34:03):
shit for Americans. Oh and we should mention that he
did have a vice president as well, Charles G.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Dawes. It's right, does what we had to say about Dawes.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
He received the Nobel Prize for helping Germany.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Oh that's cool, I like that, Gon, Max. What else
did this? Dawes fellow do so.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
Dawes actually because they were not involved in international stuff,
but when they did, they were actually good at it.
Dawes helped Germany meet its war debt obligations, you remember,
they're paying everybody off.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Which were huge and indeed part of the economic factor
leading to World War two.
Speaker 5 (34:39):
Ultimately, yeah, great depression than World War two. Uh So
he helped with that. And they also had this guy
named Secretary of State, actually Frank B. Kellogg, who was
very influential in this pack called the Kellogg Brand packed.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
We figured out how to stay.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
At one point because we have a we have an
episode about this is we do. It's titled something along
the lines of when they outlawed war, So basically it
outlawed this we're taking your land type of war, which
is still you know now, whenever countries go to war,
they come up with some fake reason, like Russia has with.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Ukraine that time everyone tried to outlaw war. January sixth,
twenty twenty two. Complete coincidence. So no presidency lasts forever
by design, you know. And you can look to the
Administration of FDR to see why that can become unpopular
(35:36):
and dangerous. So let's go to nineteen twenty eight. Our boy,
our boy, the cool cat Cow is pretty popular still,
you know, some warts, some bumps along the way, but
he's up for reelection, and there is no law at
this time that limits the amount of times you can
(35:56):
run for president. There was sort of what we could
call I hate to use this phrase, but there was
like a gentleman's agreement or house rule of US politics
that you should only run for president twice.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Is that more of like a, like you said, like
a decorum thing at this point?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yeah? Yeah, okay, gotcha, gotcha. But now it's official. Good,
Now it's super efficial. Yeah, it's good. I'm glad, Thank god,
thank god.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
And he could have run again if he had wanted to,
based on that sort of social norm of the time,
but he just was kind of done with it. I
think he'd felt like he had accomplished all he'd wanted
to do and wanted to maybe step out of the
public eye for a while.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, and going back to that excellent work by David Greenberg,
we know this. He was pretty low key and abrupt
with his announcement. He said, look, I'm not going to
seek reelection. With one statement, I do not choose to
run for president in nineteen twenty eight. The first people
to find out about this are reporters who are traveling
(36:59):
with him during his summer vacation in nineteen twenty seven,
and he just gets He doesn't even publicly say it.
He hands it to them on little strips of paper.
It's like he gave them a very specific and weird
fortune cookie. And so people like the word spreads, and people,
including his family members, have no idea what's going on.
(37:21):
Someone asks his wife Grace, what she thinks about the announcement,
and she goes, what announcement? And there's one story, a
little bit saucy. We don't know if it's totally true,
but according to one kind of cinematic story, he hands
these reporters these slips of paper and then immediately kid
you not, hops in a row boat and starts rowing
(37:42):
a way before they can say anything, Row row, row
your boat.
Speaker 5 (37:46):
That's how I was taught this story in APUs history,
and I.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Humble brag I learned it from my ap teacher. But
she said, she said, I'm telling you the version of
the story that I like.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
I'm gonna say it right now. Considering this guy He
was actually pretty into physical fitness too.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
He would like swim naked and stuff.
Speaker 5 (38:08):
Yeah, him rolling away in a boat would seem like
something very relaxing to him.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
It's like a slow fade, man. It's like Homer disappearing
backwards into the bushes.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It feels like Wes Anderson has made this film.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
It just takes so long to get You see them
for so long on the horizon, you know, it's like
slowly backing away.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
I like that. I like this Calvin Coolidge's vibe.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
And so Calvin Coolidge kind of retires from public life
sort of because he writes an autobiography. He writes articles
for magazines of note. He has a nationally syndicated column
for a newspaper for a while called Thinking Things Over
with Calvin Coolidge, because he's at that point in his
career where he feels like he has to put his
(38:53):
name in the title of everything. Anyway, I walked down
the street from that one. He lives his life until
January fifth, nineteen thirty three. It's just after lunch. He
usually takes a two hour nap after lunch at this
time in his life, but on January fifth, he collapsed
he collapses in his bedroom and later doctors conclude he
(39:17):
has died from heart failure. His passing comes right before
the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, as I mentioned,
is the reason we have hard limits on presidential terms
in the modern day. But we didn't want to end
on a total down note. So instead of closing with
(39:38):
that cinematic look at his row boating career to syndicate
a columnists switch, we've got to tell you about his
presidential pets, because we did an episode on this, and
this had to have appeared in that episode, right. He
loved dogs and cats.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
He had several by the name of Climber, Tiger and Blackie,
which is maybe a little bit problematic now, but it
is what it is. I'm not sure which was the
dogg or which was the cat in that in that trio.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
I know you didn't name the dog tiger.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You know what tiger makes sense for the cat.
Speaker 6 (40:10):
I don't know what this guy's this guy's sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Though I know he's a swing I get it.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
But he also had birds.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Uh And most importantly and delightfully, if you're a fan
of something that the internet just gives beautifully now is
raccoon content?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
He had a raccoon named Rebecca.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
I think I personally, yeah, I follow like six different
raccoon Instagram accounts. They got human hands man. It's weird,
but also it's also cute. He got lion cubs too,
that's wild lion cubs. He got those as a gift
actually from the Mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the
White House named the Cubs. I guess they sort of
(40:51):
were almost like soft ambassadors, named the Cubs Budget Bureau
and tax Reduction.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
All right, well, not every joke is going to land.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
They probably called him Budgie and Taxi, you know, a
pet names were.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
But he also had his sort of flagship pet, which
was a Collie by the name of Rob Roy, which
was a historical war hero I believe in Scotland, the
inventor of dubstep. Okay, fair enough, but also a delightful cocktail. Rebecca,
the raccoon, though, was less of Calvin's Special Guy and
(41:25):
more of Grace's. In fact, you can find a lot
of photos of them posing together at the White House.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Very domesticated, so much so that one day the Coolidge
family said, we should get Rebecca a friend. Let's get
her another raccoon. We'll name it Ruben. Get it a literation.
They're cute. However, Ruben was much less domesticated and much
more He's more of a street raccoon, you know what
I mean. He was for the streets, he was for
(41:51):
the dumpsters.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
But this is for history.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
This is a pretty good look at Calvin Coolidge. There's
a lot of stuff we didn't get to, which I
think will show up in one of our forthcoming episodes,
stuff that got left over.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
We love it. Yeah, well, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
And also in the meantime, if you want to read
more about his life following suit with his kind of
soft spoken demeanor. His autobiography is I believe, one of
the shortest and presidential history.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, it's a series of haiku. It is actually super short.
But again a man of few words, the words he
chose did have tremendous impact even today in twenty twenty four,
I almost said, twenty twenty three, Oh geez, when did
we start this show? What was it twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
I guess that's right. We talked about that the other day.
We've been doing this for over what's five six years.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Later? This year will be years seven years. Yeah, Oh,
the fingers.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Bargain, the Faustian bargains, come and do. Shout out to
anybody who gets that weird joke. I just want to
say the time has flown. So grateful to all or
ridiculous historians and Noel Max, I'm so grateful to you.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
We were talking about this a little bit off air,
but this is just one of my favorite things to do,
and we hope you enjoy it as well. Folks.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Oh, the feeling is mutual.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
I can definitely speak for both myself and Max. Even
though Max occasionally does a face palm, I think they're
good natured face palms, and these face palming out of love.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I always like to think maybe his hand just smells
really good.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
It's possible, especially the cast hands, especially of getting a
little ripe. But no, truly I feel the exact same way.
I love you both to death and I can't wait
till we reconvene. I was thinking this might be a
two parter, but I think we we we in the
spirit of Calvin himself, exercise the spirit of brevity, and
(43:48):
that is so appreciate that. Yeah, a little longer for
a one partner, but I think that there was no
other way to do.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
We had a lot of stuff to do.
Speaker 5 (43:55):
I joked beforehand, and I'm like, I think ed an
episode about Calvin Coolidge.
Speaker 6 (44:00):
We should make sure to go along on it.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, and also, you know how it is you got
to kill your darlings. I am chock full of dumb
facts about baseball hats. I'm hoping they'll fade bye by
the time we record our next episode. Big Big thanks
to superproducer and research associate for this episode, mister Max
Williams Alex Williams, real life brother of the show and
(44:23):
biological brother of Alex, who composed this slap and bop.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
It's true.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Thanks to Chris frostiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeffcoach, the
whole pantheon of ridiculous historians that came before.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
We hope you guys have a really great weekend and life.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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