Review of Review

During the 1924 presidential campaign, much was heard concerning the "Coolidge myth." Democrats maintained that between the President's capacity and the President's reputation yawned a tremendous chasm, that a Republican press had created a fiction of a "strong, silent" White House occupant. When the President won the election with a plurality of 7,300,000 votes, they attributed his victory to the potency of the Coolidge "myth."

To the mangling of this "myth" many Democratic journalists have dedicated their writing--none more vigorously than Frank R. Kent, Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Sun. Each day his Washington despatches appear in the Sun; in them the President looks very much as if viewed through the wrong end of an opera glass. Is a White House conference "muzzled," does a flood emergency inspire no extra session of Congress, Mr. Kent sharply, succinctly gives the anti-Administration aspect of the occurrence.

Last fortnight, for example, the President reviewed the United States Fleet. Last week Mr. Kent reviewed the review under the heading: A New Way to Review a Fleet. When Presidents Roosevelt, Wilson and Harding reviewed the Fleet, said Mr. Kent, "silk-hatted and frock-coated [they] stood rigidly on the bridges of their boats from the moment the first gun was fired until the last ship had passed. . . . Full dress is the order of the day. It isn't a matter of taste--it's orders. And presence of the President on the bridge is essential to the review. . . .

"Apparently Mr. Coolidge did not know and was not informed about these things. . . . Anyhow, he is the first President to review the American Navy in a yachting cap and a business suit--but that is what he wore. Also he is the first President who left the bridge after 20 minutes of the review and, retiring to the stern of his boat, there had his picture taken and reclined for the rest of the two hours on a couch from which he could neither see nor be seen by the battleships as they passed the Mayflower. . . . Naval circles in Washington are humming today--and not in gratification.

"Apparently the spectacle did not interest the Commander-in-Chief--at least not to the point of complimenting the American Navy either by his presence and attention while it passed, or by recognizing the dignity of the occasion by wearing the regulation full-dress presidential uniform. . . ."

A day-by-day newspaper column is necessarily restricted to more or less isolated incidents--a magazine article gives fuller scope for a well-rounded discussion of a subject. Such an article Mr. Kent contributed, in August, 1924, to the American Mercury, nor is there any evidence that his point of view has shifted since that date. Entitled "Mr. Coolidge," the article began by maintaining that Washington correspondents, awed by the presidential office, eager for presidential esteem, always paint a President "a little prettier than he is."

"This has been the attitude of the correspondents toward most Presidents," continued Mr. Kent. "But not in the memory of any one living has there been a President who leaned so heavily on this newspaper tendency to praise and protect?, who profited by it so much, who would shrivel so quickly if he lost it, as Calvin Coolidge. . . . Without it he would long ago have become a sort of sad political joke. ... As Governor of Massachusetts and as Vice President he had been a laughing stock for those who watched him function--a thoroughly commonplace, colorless person with a neat little one-cylinder intellect and a thoroughly precinct mind. . . . Socially and politically [as Vice President] he was generally considered hopeless . . . and it is no secret that had Mr. Harding lived the plan was not to renominate him. . . . What we really have there [in the White House] is a very much dismayed and huddled little man who is as close to complete futility as any man in his position can ever get."