The Coolidge Homestead or Trump Tower?

The other day, I took a drive to Plymouth Notch, Vermont to visit the childhood home of Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, who served from 1923 to 1929. As a native Granite Stater, I can’t think of many better ways to spend a Friday afternoon than navigating the windy backroads of bucolic New England to visit the home of Silent Cal, a statesman whom I’ve long admired. 

The Coolidge Homestead is nestled beside Vermont’s Green Mountains, enkindling a sense of security and serenity behind the wall of green. Plymouth Notch is a small village, an unincorporated community, with a small cheese factory building, a Union Christian Church, a schoolhouse, a general store, and a number of houses and barns. In today’s hustle-and-bustle world of politics—which increasingly seems professional and cookie-cutter—it’s hard to believe that an American president spent his boyhood days here working on his father’s small farm.

Coolidge was born in the village on July 4, 1872—an early sign of his impeccable service to a nation to which he was deeply devoted. After graduating from Amherst College, a task which proved to be a challenge for Cal, he started a career as a lawyer in Northampton, Massachusetts. It didn’t take long for the taciturn but steady young man to rise in the world of politics. He served in just about every office there is, from county clerk, to the chair of his local Republican Party committee, to the Massachusetts state legislature. He was later elected Mayor of Northampton, to the State Senate (later serving as the body’s president), and as lieutenant governor under Governor Samuel W. McCall. 

In 1918, Coolidge rode his reputation as a fiscally responsible, dedicated civil servant to win the Republican nomination for Massachusetts governor. He would win by a razor thin margin. Throughout his career, he only lost once, when he ran for Northampton’s school board in 1904. 

His term as governor was defined by his successful negotiation of the 1919 Boston Police Strike. With most of the city’s police force on strike, riots and unrest spread throughout the city. Coolidge would have none of it. He took control of the situation, had the officers fired, and called for a new force to be formed. During the ordeal, he sent a telegram to American Federation for Labor leader Samuel Gompers, which brought him into the national spotlight. His line, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, anytime,” was published everywhere, and established him as a rising star. In an era of heightened anxiety about revolution and unrest—communism had just swept through Russia—Coolidge demonstrated himself as a man of law and order. 

While he had served in just about every office under the sun, Coolidge was not a rabidly ambitious politician eager for power. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, he was surprisingly and almost accidentally chosen to be Warren G. Harding’s running mate. 

The quiet New Englander must have appeared alien to the swamp creatures of Washington. His beloved wife, Grace, balanced out Silent Cal’s apparent shyness with her jovial personality. Copious tales exist of Coolidge’s humorous interactions with the genteel socialites of the nation’s capital. The most famous one: At a dinner party, someone made a bet that they could get more than two words out of him. He replied, “You lose.” Another story about him sitting through an entire baseball game completely silent makes me like him even more. It made me even happier when I read that, when he retired from politics, he swapped his support of the Washington Senators for the Boston Red Sox. A true American patriot.

While he was largely behind the scenes as vice president, this quiet demeanor later proved to be an asset in the wake of President Harding’s corruption. Well-known for its scandalizing engagements, Harding’s administration was most infamously plagued by the Teapot Dome scandal. Harding’s propensity to cheat, including on his wife, couldn’t have been more different from Coolidge’s traditional morality and honesty. 

I visited Coolidge’s home on August 2, which, I learned upon arrival, was just a day before the anniversary of his famous rise to the highest office in the land (and a year too late for the centennial celebration). In the summer of 1923, Harding’s health rapidly deteriorated; he died quickly and unexpectedly on a trip to the West Coast. Coolidge was home in Plymouth Notch at the time. 

His house did not have electricity or a telephone. That night, he received word of Harding’s death by messenger. At 2:47 on the morning of August 3, Coolidge took the presidential oath, administered by his father, with a kerosene lamp lighting the small crowd, which included his wife Grace and U.S. Representative Porter H. Dale. In that small house, hidden in the middle of nowhere and today only visited by a select few history nerds and curious Vermonters, a humble man ascended to the highest office of the greatest nation on Earth.

Coolidge has today gained a dedicated following from conservatives, including myself. He is remembered for his strict fiscal responsibility, his respect for limited government, and for presiding over the economic growth of the Roaring Twenties. His administration declined to recognize the Soviet Union, it pursued disarmament at the Washington Naval Conference, and rejected war as legitimate diplomacy with the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He spoke in favor of civil rights at a time of racial tension, standing in contrast to the viciously racist Woodrow Wilson, and signed the Indian Citizenship Act. Above all, though, he knew the office of president to be limited, he respected the Constitution, and refused to exercise power where it wasn’t warranted. 

In today’s populist age, this restrained New Englander would be a complete foreigner. Our current election cycle is a battle between loud, uninhibited megalomaniacs. On one side, we have Donald Trump, whose love of himself and the spotlight was most obviously reflected in that bombastic rap concert Republicans called a national convention. On the other, we have Kamala Harris, who is rising in the polls through incoherent Gen-Z TikTok trends, and who adopts just about every progressive policy there is (well, if you listen to Harris herself and not the media). 

When I visited the Coolidge homestead, I couldn’t ignore the contrast between the respectable statesmanship and prudence reflected in that quaint little village in Vermont, and the avarice and intensity seen in the glistening Trump Tower. What happened to the days when presidents were servants who focused on results, not social media stars? What happened to the practice of governance? Now, that’s hardly the president’s responsibility. You can be sure, though, to find them on Twitter, or whatever app Trump uses these days. 

We can learn a lot from Coolidge. The best example he provides, at least for the present moment, is how to relinquish power. Despite his success and popularity, he chose not to run for another full term. Joe Biden bowed out kicking and screaming. He fought so hard to keep his hold on power even when it was obviously the wrong decision. Donald Trump lost, but pretended he didn’t and never went away. Both could be enjoying retirement right now. Instead, they view the presidency as a power for them to wield as long and forcefully as possible. 

We are in a world of Trumps and Bidens. Now is a great time to take a trip to Plymouth Notch, to reflect on the legacy of the man born there, and to assiduously weigh what we value in a leader. Otherwise, an entire world of politics with wisdom to offer might be lost for good.