T O any unbiased observer, who does not dig below surface
facts, the amazing strength of Mr. Coolidge with the people and his equally amazing weakness in Congress must seem an absurd contradiction. The two facts, plain to all, simply do not check up. No ordinary process of reasoning seems sufficient to reconcile them.
Mere denunciation of Congress is an evasion, not an answer, although it is the favourite reply of the President's defenders. Congress is elected by the people just as is the President, and is responsive to the same popular sentiment. It is easy, of course, to understand that when it is con- trolled by one party and the Executive belongs to the other, conflicts arise and futility results. It is hard to comprehend, however, why a Republican President on the threshold of his term with thousands of political plums to distribute, and the lustre of a seven million popular majority at the polls still bright on his brow, should be unable to obtain from a Republican Senate confirmation of an appointment to his Cabinet, or muster more than a bare one-third vote to sustain his veto. That such a President, under such conditions, should con- sistently have his own policies rejected, and the measures he opposes forced upon him, is practically without precedent. That this is what has happened to Mr. Coolidge is-the simple truth. The bald facts leave no escape from the conclusion that, however sound his ideas and correct his position as an executive and a party leader, he has in the past two years established an extraordinary record for feebleness. If what has happened half a dozen times to Mr. Coolidge had happened once to the English Prime Minister, the resignation of the Government would imme- diately have followed. In America, failure of support does not lessen by a day the fixed four-year term. Mr. Coolidge has not had one adverse vote from Congress in two years, he has had six. His inability to get Congress to pass his pet Bills, or to prevent Congress from passing its own, has been demonstrated at least so often. It happened before his election and since. It happened in the Senate and in the House. It happened with the Senate elected before he became President, and it has happened with the new Senate.
A list of the distasteful things Congress has done to Mr. Coolidge runs all the way from the shelving of his World Court pleas, and the ignoring of his agricultural recommendations, to the passing of the bonus over his veto and the insertion of the Japanese exclusion clause against his earnest protest. And even that leaves out of account the rejection of his appointments and the raising of Congressmen's salary—and, against his violent oppo- sition, the salary of Mr. Coolidge's own secretary. When it is analysed and reviewed this is an astounding record, the full force and significance of which is not grasped by the American people because it has not been fairly nor fully presented to them. The literal fact is that, in two years Mr. Coolidge has failed to put through a single thing he wanted, and has had put through, in spite of him, all the things he particularly did not want. That statement cannot and will not be disputed by any posted person. - Now, notwithstanding these undeniable facts, culminat- ing lately in the historic and humiliating rejection of his candidate for Attorney-General, we find two things unmistakably clear : first that the great business and financial forces of the country are more solidly back of Mr. Coolidge :hart any President in a generation, and second that the Press support and protection given to Mr. Coolidge are greater than any other President ever had.
In America—and most other countries—public senti- ment is made, not reflected, by the business interests and the newspapers. Between them they give the public its political views. Between them they have created a feeling, general throughout the country, that Mr. Coolidge is a safe, sound, sincere man. If the one word " in- effectual " is added, that comes fairly close to being an accurate description of the President.
These two forces, the business interests and the news- papers, are almost—not quite, but almost—as solidly back of him now, in spite of his record of failures, as they were before he made it. And, such is the power of pro- paganda, and such are the difficulties of getting a clear picture before the whole people, that the continued and unbroken support of these two elements has, thus far, prevented the public from recognizing that it is a record of failures.
Right here, of course, it is pertinent to ask why, in the circumstances, this support is unanimous and un- shaken ? The most adequate answer is this : in America, as in England, people groan under the weight of taxes, and there was never a time when governmental economy and tax reduction seemed so-desirable. At the start Mr. Coolidge struck the economy key in his first message. There was nothing original about that. Every public man does the same thing. However, it was followed by the prompt -presentation of the Mellon Bill, a measure prepared by Secretary of the Treasury A. J. Mellon, who is about the third or fourth richest man in the country. This Bill proposed such a lovely and luscious cut in -the sur-taxes on large individual• and corporate incomes that, over-night, the whole business, banking and railroad world slid behind Mr. Coolidge— and there froze solid. And with them went a newspaper support such as had heretofore only been accorded to a War President.
And they are still back of him—business men, railroad executives, bankers, newspapers. These really constitute the country. The rest either swings in behind them, or is too negligible to count. It is true the Mellon Bill, upon which they had set their hearts, did not get through Congress last time. It was. shot to pieces by the Opposition, and a measure wholly different in detail and principle was passed. This Mr. Coolidge signed, reluctantly and under protest. It cut the taxes on the small incomes, not the large ones, thus rejecting the Coolidge-Mellon-Wall .Street-newspaper argument that the real way to lighten the load of the little fellow is to lighten the big fellow's load first.
Naturally, there was bitter disappointment in business circles, but Mr. Coolidge promised that, if elected at the next session, he would enact a new Mellon Bill. His recent defeat in the new Senate, made possible by votes in his own party, indicate, at least, considerable uncer- tainty as to whether he can any more " make good " next time than he did last time. Still, the prospect and the promise are enough to hold his supporters solidly together. Also, by declining to travel in a private caf,, by cutting down the number of towels in the White House, and substituting a common drinking cup for the executive clerks for the more expensive, though sanitary, paper cups, he has impressed the people with the sincerity of his desire for economy.
The way these little things have been presented to the public by the overpoweringly friendly Press undoubtedly makes a sort of popular hero out of the President. PeOple call him " Cal " and chuckle over stories illustrative of his Vermont thriftiness. They laugh tolerantly instead of derisively over his taking his exercise on an electric hobby horse. Obvious and trivial as they arc, beyond doubt his little White House economies strike a popular chord. The general feeling about Mr. Coolidge is a very remarkable tribute to the power of the Press when it is united, determined, and has time enough to make a sell:- timent as strong in all parts of the country as in one. Of course, the greatness and glamour of the Presidential office make every President seem larger than he really is. With the Press protection afforded to this White House incumbent it is almost impossible for the public to get an accurate measure of the man. So strong is his backing, based on the Mellon Bill hope, that his most conspicuous failures have hurt him but little. On the other hand; Congress has been more fiercely assailed and more generally discredited than ever before.
It is a rather absurd situation—this desperate fight of the Coolidge Press to keep from admitting, even to them- selves, that their hero is nothing like so heroic as they had believed. The suspicion is beginning to seep around that ability to dominate, or at least to secure the co- operation of Congress, is an essential quality in a President who has a programme. The recent Senate rejection— forty-six to thirty-nine—of his candidate for Attorney- General has somewhat -shaken' the smug serenity of his supporters and aroused some slight apprehension for the future. However, there is not the slightest disposition upon the part of the big business leaders back of Mr. Coolidge to shift, even though the more clear-headed among them are convinced of his inherent feebleness. -For one thing; there is nowhere else for them to go. They put him in for four years, and, there he is to the end of the term. For another thing, from the business stand- point, there are a lot worse things than inaction. A Government that marks time gives big business time to breathe.
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