National Affairs: The Coolidge Why

• Share

Calvin Coolidge retired from the Presidency because he felt that no man could, in that office, give the people the best service for longer than eight years. He had been told that the Kansas City nomination was his for the taking. He felt that his re-election was "assured." Yet, obedient to a desire to get back to the people, he said, "I-do-not-choose-to-run" in South Dakota and followed that up by despatching his secretary to the Republican National Convention to tell the leaders of unpledged State delegations not to vote for him.

So announced Citizen Coolidge last week, in a brief article, the second of a series for William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan magazine. The title was: "Why I Did Not Choose To Run." His retirement, he explained, was prompted more by an inner impulse of what was right than by specific facts—reasons, he admitted, which "may not appear very convincing."

With deliberation he chose the fourth anniversary of his taking office to issue his South Dakota statement. He "chose" early enough to give the G. O. P. a chance to select his successor. He had, he said, no feeling that the no-third-term tradition applied to him, as he had come up from the vice presidency and he was sure that the country shared his opinion. But ten years in the White House was too long a strain. Wrote Mr. Coolidge:

"It is difficult to conceive how one man can successfully serve the country for a term [as President] of more than eight years."

Mr. Coolidge sought to avoid the appearance of selfish "grasping for office." Presidents, he found, "are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly . . . assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant."

The latter part of the administrations of two-term Presidents, he thought, showed "very little in the way of constructive accomplishment" and has "often been clouded with grave disappointments." These facts, coupled with his own desire, Mr. Coolidge gave as his reasons for retirement.

To him there was nothing mystifying about his "I-do-not-choose" statement. His reason for refusing to say specifically that he would refuse the nomination if it came to him, was because "it would not be in accordance with my conception of the requirements of the Presidential office." His determination was to prevent his nomination and to this end he sent his secretary Everett Sanders—"a man of great ability and discretion"—to Kansas City to divert convention votes for him. Wrote Mr. Coolidge (Editor Ray Long of Cosmopolitan italicized it) : "Had I not done so, I am told, I should have been nominated."

Citizen Coolidge said he was careful to take no part in the primary campaigns. He found no reason for his participation for "the party had plenty of [presidential] material . . . and the candidate should really be the choice of the people themselves." He admitted that a President could nominate his successor, but such a nomination, he felt, would often prove a handicap to the nominee.