Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as president for a term to which he was actually elected. He makes a speech declaring that the US is entering “an era of prosperity.” He doesn’t say how long an “era” is. He says that even as the US expanded its territorial holdings, entered the Great War, then withdrew from Europe “unrecompensed save in the consciousness of duty done,” we “have enlarged our freedom, we have strengthened our independence. We have been, and propose to be, more and more American. We believe that we can best serve our own country and most successfully discharge our obligations to humanity by continuing to be openly and candidly, intensely and scrupulously American.”
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He calls, as always, for reducing government expenditure, “not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. ... Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” Naturally, he wishes to cut taxes on the wealthy, calling high taxation “wrong. We cannot finance the country, we cannot improve social conditions, through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon the rich.” Well, not with that attitude, mister. He says “The result of economic dissipation to a nation is always moral decay.” He says the “rights and duties” of property “have been revealed, through the conscience of society, to have a divine sanction.”
He insults people who break the law – he doesn’t say which laws, but he can only be talking about prohibition – as barbarians & defectives who “are not following the path of civilization, but are displaying the traits of ignorance, of servitude, of savagery, and treading the way that leads back to the jungle.”
Well, that was a fun insight into Coolidge’s thinking, which is odd in ways I can’t quite put my finger on.
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The president’s speech is overshadowed by the speech Vice President Charles Dawes gave earlier in the day after he was sworn in in the Senate Chamber, where he is now presiding officer (a reminder: there has been no VP for the last year and a half). He attacks the filibuster and accuses the senators of wasting time and failing in their duty. He pounds the desk and he shouts and waves his arms and wags his finger at the senators – WAGS HIS FINGER! – which I’m guessing Coolidge did not do (the NYT describes Cal as “never resorting to the dramatic”). He gets bored with administering the oath to senators a few at a time and does all the rest at once. There is much harrumphing from senators about this perceived disrespect. And now they have to deal with Dawes as their presiding officer, a position that was much more hands-on in those days than it is now. It is true that the in the dying days of the 68th Congress the Senate did not cover itself in glory, with many bills being killed by filibusters, but presumably Dawes’ biggest complaint about filibusters is that he’ll have to sit through them and we can see that he gets bored rather easily.
19 governors took part in the procession to the White House, but only Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania rode a horse, like God intended, wearing a sombrero, like God did not intend (I can’t find a picture that shows enough of his hat to determine if it’s actually a sombrero, and I’m suspicious about whether the NYT really knows what a sombrero is).
Film of the inauguration (there’s more horsies):
Mae Nolan finishes her only term as congresscritter (R-California), replacing her dead husband. She didn’t run for re-election, finding politics “entirely too masculine to have any attraction for feminine responsibilities.” In two years, she never made a speech.
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