David Pietrusza

C-Span has posted more video from the October symposium sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. In today’s episode, David Pietrusza speaks on Coolidge’s political philosophy.

C-Span has posted the video for the dedication of the Coolidge Museum and Education Center last August.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation is sponsoring a one-day symposium, “Straight Talk,” at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library on October 7. Featuring a range of speakers — including Jack Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and our own Amity Shlaes and Joe Thorndike — the session is open to the public. Tickets are available, both for the symposium and for the gala dinner afterwards. Get yours today.

Over at Townhall.com, David Stokes makes a nice point about the importance of context when evaluating political speech. Using the Shirley Sherrod episode as a contemporary hook, Stokes goes on to defend the honor and historical reputation of Calvin Coolidge.

In particular, Stokes bemoans the histriographical hegemony of Coolidge’s most famous quotation: “The business of America is business.”

In fact, as most readers of this blog probably know, that’s actually a misquote. What Coolidge actually said in his January 17, 1925 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors was slightly different: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.”

A quibble? Perhaps. But I think the distinction is important. The business of the American people is one thing, but the business of the American nation is something quite different. As individuals, we may all be chiefly concerned with “business”: our livelihood, wealth, and economic well-being. But as a nation, we are also concerned with something more: Much more, in fact.

The business quotation, as Stokes points out, has generally been ripped from its context — first by Coolidge contemporaries and later by critical historians. Coolidge’s speech was not, principally, about the role of business in American society. Rather, it focused on the importance of journalism in a free country.

In covering the speech, the New York Times got the story right: “Coolidge Declares Press Must Foster American Idealism,” the paper reported in its headline. Coolidge critics, by contrast, have generally gotten it wrong. Or at least only half right. To be sure, Coolidge spent some of the speech defending the role of wealth in a democratic society. But the principal burden of his address was a defense of  American idealism. As he noted near the end:

We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.

[Incidentally, Robert Sobel wrote a useful analysis of  Coolidge's "business of the American people" quotation, available online from the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. While too critical of mainstream Coolidge historiography, the essay nicely challenges the easy caricature of Coolidge as a stooge of big business. ]