What Silent Cal Could Tell Romney: Lessons from the last Republican Massachusetts governor turned presidential nominee
When Mitt Romney takes the podium Thursday night to be his party’s nominee for the presidency, he would do well to remember the words of Calvin Coolidge, the last Republican governor of Massachusetts to be so honored. He might find a sympathetic soul, with much to teach him.
The two temperamentally conservative, politically progressive governors weren’t always GOP darlings—or even its first choices. Former vice president Coolidge, after a tumultuous year as president following the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in August 1923, was nearly dumped in favor of Henry Ford. Romney, whose previous campaign failed four years ago, limped to the nomination after a grueling slog to win the requisite delegates. The introverted governors share the status of political outsider: Coolidge with his Vermont taciturnity and silence, Romney with his Mormon, Midwest politeness. While Romney’s opponents made much of his wealth, Coolidge’s foes made much of the two-family home he rented. Neither man was well acquainted with the Beacon Hill politics, the booze-fueled backroom deals of which often excluded the teetotaling governors.
Harding and Coolidge ran in 1920 promising “a return to normalcy,” but events—low-level corruption, economic depression, and Harding’s death—conspired to keep that normalcy from them. The U.S. Senate was in open revolt against Coolidge, who possessed none of the charms of the affable Harding (a former U.S. senator). Coolidge’s nomination speech then, in August 15, 1924, was to set the tone for his presidency and ultimately for his party. He had little doubt that if a party were “founded upon a great moral principle and directed with scrupulous regard for its integrity, it cannot fail to sweep onward and upward, advancing always steadily and surely, a mighty constructive force, a glorious bearer of progress.” This belief came from Coolidge’s deeper view that man possessed a “spiritual nature.” “Touch it [politically], and it must respond as the magnet to the pole.” If you make moral arguments, not only will you win; you will be worthy. The Republicans assembled in Tampa this week understand this need for a moral claim, which explains why they adopted “We Built This” as the convention’s theme.