The Political Thought of
Calvin Coolidge
The Political Thought of
Calvin Coolidge
Burkean Americanist
Thomas J. Tacoma
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
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Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tacoma, Thomas J., 1990– author
Title: The Political Thought of Calvin Coolidge : Burkean Americanist / Thomas J. Tacoma.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Arguing that Calvin Coolidge was a Burkean conservative and an Americanist politician, Tacoma analyzes the way Coolidge responded to the challenge of upholding American civilization in a changing world by contextualizing Coolidge’s thought in the Progressive milieu of the age and examining the core of Coolidge’s political thought: civilization.”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020031546 (print) | LCCN 2020031547 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793624413 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793624420 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Coolidge, Calvin, 1872–1933—Political and social views. | United States—Politics and government—1923–1929. | Progressivism (United States politics)—History—20th century. | Conservatism—United States—History—20th century. | United States—Politics and government—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC E792 .T34 2020 (print) | LCC E792 (ebook) | DDC 973.91/5092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031546
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020031547
For Ashley
Acknowledgments
I once read an acknowledgments page in which the author claimed to have incurred no debts in writing to anyone. I do not pretend to understand how that could ever be true, and it is certainly not true of this book, which could not have been written without the assistance of many good people.
Good books result in large part from good librarians, and I am grateful to the librarians at Mossey Library and at Guyton Library for their assistance. Brenna Wade, Colleen Ladd, Shelby Carmichael, and Hannah Johnson have made my research much easier by helping me to locate books, articles, and old magazine clippings. Special thanks, too, go to Julie Bartlett Nelson, librarian at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum at Forbes Library, who helped me in my archival research.
The editors and anonymous reviewer for Lexington Books have helped me to improve my writing and ideas for this book. Joseph Parry and Alison Keefner have provided invaluable editorial assistance and advice, and I wish to thank them for their help. Special thanks also go to the reviewer whose scholarly feedback was exactly what the book needed to improve.
Good books also take time to research, to think about, and to write. These require financial support, and I have been the recipient of great generosity. Grants from the Institute for Humane Studies and from the Acton Institute made it possible for me to visit the Coolidge archives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and later to present some of my ideas in rough form at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia in 2018. Individual donors made possible my studies at Baylor University and Hillsdale College, and I wish to thank Charles Guittard for taking a special interest in my career even beyond my time at Baylor.
Teachers, mentors, and good colleagues have also helped make this book possible. The support of my colleagues and the administration at Blue Mountain College, especially that of Barbara McMillin, Sharon Enzor, and Stewart Bennett, has made the process of transforming my dissertation into a book less difficult than it would otherwise have been. I owe equally great debts to my other fine teachers. Paul Rahe, Mickey Craig, and Thomas West are magnificent scholars and teachers, and they have helped me to think more clearly and more deeply about political theory and American political thought. Tom West’s interpretation of the American founding has been particularly helpful for me in thinking about Calvin Coolidge’s place in American history. Equally important have been the aid given and insights shared from Richard Gamble and Darryl Hart, both interpreters of American history.
This book is the outgrowth of my dissertation, written at Hillsdale College in 2018 and 2019. My dissertation adviser and long-time mentor, Ronald Pestritto, challenged me in numerous ways to write better, to research more thoroughly, and to focus my thoughts. His teaching and his modeling of scholarship have inspired this project. The other dissertation readers, Adam Carrington and Paul Moreno, both provided insightful suggestions for improvement. Joseph Postell, a leading scholar of American administrative law and of constitutional conservatism, has provided invaluable advice throughout this project and beyond. I also wish to acknowledge the influence of Larry Arnn, who challenged my interpretation of Coolidge repeatedly during my dissertation defense, as a great teacher and mentor. My study of Coolidge has its origins in studying Winston Churchill under his guidance, and I spent nine years as a student at his school.
The kind support of friends and family are essential to the success of any worthwhile endeavor. Daniel Wright, who maintains a comprehensive blog of all things related to Calvin Coolidge, was an encouragement all along. Koty Arnold, a fellow Coolidge scholar and graduate student during my time at Hillsdale, has helped me to think more carefully and critically about Coolidge’s political thought. Most important has been the support of my wife, Ashley. She patiently supported me throughout my long graduate school years, and any success I have had is due in large part to her.
Introduction
Coolidge, Progressivism, and American Civilization
A single question prompted this book: how did non-Progressive political thinkers respond to the challenges of Progressivism while at the same time sufficiently addressing the problems that gave rise to Progressive ideas? Studies of the progressive era, which according to most estimates lasted roughly from 1890 to 1920, focus almost exclusively on the Progressives—the challenges they faced, the ideas they embraced, and the reforms they put in place. But if they faced challenges, if they were so strongly opposed, then by whom? And if their ideas won widespread acceptance but ultimately faded from public view by the 1920s, then what was the content of the thought that opposed and replaced those Progressive ideas? More to the point, if Progressive reformers truly sought to transform constitutional government and to usher in a new theory of government to justify their revisions, who stood against them in defense of the older theory, or perhaps to promote an alternative theory, of American constitutionalism?
A few scholars have recently begun to study such questions. Their works focus on “constitutional conservatism” and the opposition