Out-Coolidging Coolidge

     When my youngest sister and I were teenagers (I was the younger), she had an unfortunate addiction to chewing gum combined with a habit of swallowing the wad she had. This left her searching desperately for a new stick at any cost.  As a nascent capitalist I recognized low-risk, high-return market opportunities and always had about me a pack of five sticks of her favorite gum, purchased for a nickel, from which I was reluctantly willing to part with one stick, also for a nickel.  By the time I had reached supposed mature moral discretion at about age 22 I had realized the moral quagmire into which my profiteering upon the weaknesses of others had been dragging me.  Perhaps that is why I have ever since looked askance at a life of unbridled concentration only on profit.  I know my own weaknesses, too.
     At any rate, that may be why, when encountering recently the famous quotation from our 30th President, Calvin Coolidge, that "the business of America is business", I decided to look a little into the life and times of the Great Man.  After all, why is a President saying the business of America is business rather than preserving the blessings of Liberty, as defined in the Constitution, or even being "a light upon a hill", as defined by Ronald Reagan. 
     Coolidge had first come to national prominence as governor of Massachusetts.  He was, it seems, a man agressively dedicated to continuance of the status quo.  To quote the official White House biography, "As President, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying. He refused to use Federal economic power to check the growing boom or to ameliorate the depressed condition of agriculture and certain industries. His first message to Congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers." 
     In pursuit of that goal, he twice vetoed farm aid, though in the roaring 20's farmers were the canary in the coal mine  signalling the Great Depression that was to come.  He also refused to fund a proposal to provide public electrical power with a dam on the Tennessee River, a project which of course later became the Depression ameliorating TVA project for which Roosevelt was justly acclaimed.  Walter Lipmann, the great political columnist of the time described Coolidge's style as, "active inactivity."  Of course, if you are actively inactive, you are really choosing, as Coolidge did, to make decisions that preserve the status quo and minimize change.  Real neutrality is not an option.
     If you are beginning to find Coolidge strangely familiar (former Massachusetts governor?, tax cuts and no public works?, total concentration on the role of business?;  hmm, who could that be? I'm sure I know him somewhere.), then beyond Mitt Romney, the obvious match for all attributes, including the Massachusetts bit, you might want to cast your eye over the entire right wing of the Republican party.  For they all share a common focus, and while most are of good intent, that focus leads them in directions they later might regret.
     Let us pause a moment and distinguish between Visions and Memories.  A vision involves a view of how things ought to be in the future; a memory involves a view of how things were, or seemed to be, in the past.  I say that about memory cautiously, for I am always sensitive to the different memories that persons, say an African-American and a traditional southern caucasian, might have of the same America.  To preserve the status quo or to "Re-Create America" thus is loyalty to a memory that others might not share, not a vision .  For visions are of "Alabaster Cities undimmed by human tears", and are meant to be sought by all.
     Unfortunately, the focus of the Republican right wing is on,  first, re-creating a past that would not be desirable for significant parts of America today and, second, would not ever be attainable and, third, focusing only on a few selective aspects of that prior time.  But you can't go home again. I admire their loyalty to the dream world of their childhood, but it can provide no real basis for steering America in the 21st Century.
     "Where there is no Vision, the people perish"; those are the Biblical words quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking to America from another troubled time.       "That vision thing" has been assiduously avoided by the right wing since the era of George H. W. Bush, and before that, Calvin Coolidge. But Business as Usual while dreaming of rocking on the front porch of tree-shaded houses that no longer exist will not enable America to cope with the issues of the new century.  It is time for the right wing to lift their eyes and see visions of  a new America fit for the 21st century and to proclaim their view so that all of us can work together toward the future we will all share.