American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 30.2 Calvin Coolidge

Episode Date: October 4, 2020

We found it hard to figure out Coolidge last episode, but maybe this episode will clear things up. Find out what he got up to as president! Oh, and there is a vibrating horse and a rampaging bear in it. 

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, Golden Coolidge Part 2. Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Trump. And this is 30.2. Calvin Kortlich, part two. Yes, yeah. Bit boring. Or is he? Well, he was in the last episode. I'm hoping it picks up i really am he seems i don't know i'm

just gonna say it now right at the start he's an odd one he's a very odd one yeah maybe um reading the biography i'm reading reading his autobiography uh all these bits of and uh graces and uh just dipping into other biographies maybe i've gotten lucky with where i'm looking because since last episode some people got in contact to say something along the lines of oh come on coolidge was hilarious he was a great kind of fun president and oh it was funny jokes and japes and all the stories and i i've just not seeing it. I'm not. He comes across as more robotic. In my head, I'd like to believe that everything he says that's a joke,

he does not intend to be a joke. He's just saying it in a deadpan voice. And people are desperately hoping that it's a joke. Otherwise... Was that a pun? Please be a pun. Yeah. Gentle innuendo. I don't know. It was a hard one, sir a pun. Yeah. Gentle innuendo.

I don't know. It was a hard one, sir. You're right. That kind of thing. Yes. Who knows? You can make up your mind at the end when we judge him, finally. Okay.

But let's start the episode because you'll be pleased to know I've got another anecdote to start us off. Just like last time. I'm not just plucking it out of the air this time. Okay. I've got a wee little story. But just like last time, it is debatable whether this really happened or not. Yeah, I'll go with a no.

Yeah, maybe. But let's hear it. I'm intrigued. But you need to start me off. Start with repeating flashing light. Like, very rhythmic. Okay. With orangey kind of glow.

So it's like a lamp light, maybe an early light bulb light, but it's not like flickering. It's like a consistent pulsing. Steady beat of a light. Right, I can do this, but just bear in mind, it's going to change the anecdote slightly near the start, and it's not necessarily all going to be authentic. See if you can figure out where I've changed it.

Okay. Start with a pulsating orange light on this international space station it's it's just it's just black with like sort of sort of spirals of smoke and a flashing steady pulsing light and slowly but surely you just hear the getting louder and you realise you're outside a 70s disco yeah it's just a pulsating beat flashing lights, there's people wearing far more sequins

than's necessary trousers far too wide and yeah, out steps this room because it comes into focus you realize that you are on a church door and you realize that there's no singing it's just the the drone of a sermon being given over that steady rhythmic beat oh like disco sermon oh yeah it's the roaring 20s jamie yeah It was a good time. Drive for redemption. Exactly. Yeah, anyway. The Coolidge. The Coolidge?

That should have been his nickname. The President Coolidge. Coolidge. Oh yeah. He steps out waving the dry ice out of his face and he strides off. And he goes, wow. Then he does the whole walk down the street which is the opening to Saturday Night Fever.

Yeah. All that happens. And then finally he gets home, back to the White House where Grace is waiting. Grace hadn't been at the sermon. She'd been a bit under the weather. And it's like you don't want that pulsating rhythmic beat whilst you've got a headache. No. Anyway, she turned to her husband as he entered the room

and asked whether he had enjoyed the sermon. Yes, came the reply. Groovy. What was it about? asked Grace. There was a pause. And then Cordage replied, Sin.

Grace attempts one more time to actually have a conversation but but what what what did he say there was another pause he was against it and there you go from there just uh i'm going for a screen wipe disco ball screen wipe it kind of pendulums across the screen balloony balloony rice and it's yellow on a brown background definitely yeah with red dots in it that kind of thing so there you go that that's um that story apparently most people say that didn't happen in real life and my little embellishments uh may have also made it less true than it was before. Which embellishments were they? It wasn't a church.

Exactly. But there we go. That's Coolidge part two. Yeah, he's living up to expectations so far. Good. Glad to hear it. Right, well, let's crack on, shall we? Harding, he's dead.

He's well dead. He is. Corlidge finds himself the 30th president of the United States. Do you think he did a little fist bump? No. Okay, yes. I think, if you remember, he's staying at his father's house. Oh, then probably didn't.

He was woken up in the middle of the night and told, Harding's dead, you're the president. So I think he just shifted into his 90-degree sitting position and activated pleased mode. But who knows? Anyway, he's woken up. He heads on downstairs, and a crowd starts to gather fairly quickly, as you can imagine.

They need to swear Coolidge in. He's now the president. So how do we do that? They ask each other. That's a good point. Hang on. Hang on. Are you Googling it?

No, I'm looking at my notes. Oh, right. Okay. Was his father John? Yes. Now, no, farm. He was a farmer, wasn't he? Yeah, he was to begin with.

I thought it said vicar. That's what it looks like. Oh, no. Oh, easy. wasn't he yeah he wants to begin with but i can't i thought he said vicar that's why i looked at the oh no oh easy um i'm not sure how you've done it but you have stumbled across the right answer in a way here the farmer did it it was decided that as john was a notary he would be able to swear his own son in he he'd done other things no no, but he worked as a notary. And that was enough for him to swear his son in. Apparently, they found a copy of the Constitution in John's library. Just lying around. Yeah.

It's America. Everyone's got a copy of the Constitution. It's true. I've got one somewhere. Have you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Didn't you get it when we decided we were going to do the President's Series?

Yeah. Complete waste of money. Can't even read it. You're the constitution expert now. Excellent. Yeah, it's very useful. Yeah, no, they just decided, you know what, John, you can do it. So Coolidge becomes the only president in history to be sworn in by his father.

Although there was some debate as to whether this was proper. Was this done correctly? So Coolidge was sworn in again a few days later just to really make sure. Dual swearage. Do you think his dad had to sign a conflict of interest kind of document beforehand? I'd like to think so.

Though interestingly, apparently he didn't even need to swear in because vice presidents don't need to swear in when they overtake officers. Oh, but think about the draft of Kennedy. There's a photograph of it yeah i i i think they do because it looks good but apparently according to the law there's nothing in there that says the vice president has to swear in okay as far as i'm aware according to the book i read that was a little footnote so yeah there you go but anyway point is he's president

so he heads to washington he didn't move out of the hotel do you remember he was in that hotel where uh he kept being told that he wasn't allowed to go places because he wasn't the vice president of the hotel just the country yeah yeah yeah so he's still there he doesn't move into the white house to begin with because obviously harding's family's still there so he allows harding's family time to to move out it's a bit unseemly body yeah to be a bit unseemly just to be wandering through the rooms with a tape measurer and this room in red yeah so a little bit of time uh but it's fine Harding's family move out the college's head into the White House and thenvin sets out to show that he was not about to

upend anything that his predecessor was up to now remember harding recently dead was riding a high in popularity no one's more popular than a dead president or at least a recently dead president that's true so college led to be known i'm going to be the second Harding. Don't worry, I'll keep everything ticking over just how he did. Nice. Yeah. He then met with the press and announced that he would continue Harding's twice-weekly press meetings with questions written down beforehand for organisation, which the press enjoyed. And they were pleased with his performance in general, but not everyone was happy.

Henry Cabot Lodge had exclaimed after hearing the news of Harding's death. His first reaction was to say, my God, that means Coolidge is president. It's not a vote of confidence, is it? Another prominent man in the party announced, if this country has reached a state where Coolidge is the right sort of person for president, then any boy has qualified for the office. Oh, dear. Yeah.

If you remember, Coolidge sticks to himself, doesn't make friends easily, and he isn't particularly well-liked by his own party. He got shoehorned into the vice presidency job as an afterthought, sticking it to the party elite. Yeah. Yeah, so everyone sees him as a bit of a caretaker. There's only just over a year until the next election. He can ride this out, and then we'll put someone proper in place.

Yeah. That's generally the thought. Yeah. In fact, so much was this the thought. It wasn't just people in the party thinking about this. The general mood in the country was that Coolidge had got somewhat lucky in his life. He had stumbled into his post.

Analogies to baseball were commonly made, apparently, which I'm sure resonated better with the audience at the time than it does with us two, since we don't know baseball. Do you have any idea? It's like rounders. It's rounders. Any of the phrases?

Well, apparently he was. Home run? Well, I've got it. First base president? Oh, yeah, no, no, no. I've got it, Jeremy. Don't worry. Sorry, I'm sorry.

That's my knowledge. It's impressive. Babe Ruth. He's the Babe Ruth. He was around at this time. Yes, he was. Strikes. Three strikes. And then impressive. Babe Ruth. He's the Babe Ruth. He was around at this time. Yes, he was. Strikes. Three strikes and then you go to prison for the rest of your life. Something to do with that.

It's a harsh game. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just read the quote and then we'll see if we understand all of it. But I'm sure most of our listeners will. Apparently, he was a baseball player who reached first base on a walk, stole a second base, got third on an error,

and reached home base because the catcher died. I think I vaguely follow that. I think I vaguely do. I'm not sure what on a walk means. I'm guessing. Easy. Are they just easy? No, no.

Here's where we can play. Can we guess what the analogy means? walk means. I'm guessing... Easy. Are they just easy? No, no. Here's where we can play Can We Guess What? the analogy means and we can have lots of replies from our listeners going, please never try and guess American sports again. Can I do a jingle? Hang on. Okay, do a jingle. America,

can we guess it? Can we guess it? Can we guess it? Okay, let's play this. Let's see if we can figure out what this means. Okay, so you're saying first base on a walk just means that it was really easy. He just walked it. He strolled it. Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to go for this. I'm going to say that there was something wrong with the throw, the pitch. So that means that you get to walk to first base. Ooh. Yeah, that's what I'm going to say. That sounds better. Because that way it's not Coolidge doing anything, like just finding it easy. It means it was given to him.

But is it an analogy for the start of his life where he did just walk up the throw? I don't know. Okay, second one. Stole a second bass. So you could go very literal with this. I'm guessing something like he was actually beaten there by the catcher person, but the umpire gave it to him anyway. Oh, that's good.

I like that. So he should have been out but he got away with it yeah yeah see i had nothing on that one so let's let's go for that okay oh no because that's surely the same thing here got third on an error surely that's that maybe this is where the umpire they called umpires referees um yeah uh where the ref said uh just miscounted the bases maybe possibly there are four it's it can get confusing could it be maybe something to do with the batter so it's really it should have been a a strike but it wasn't but they still made it there or maybe he just went to third base by mistake that's an error isn't it't it? That's a big error, yes.

But I don't know why he'd be allowed to stay there. I don't know, I'm struggling with this one. The last one's easy, and the most amusing one. He gets to the end because the catcher dies. I think I get that one. Yeah, I think that works. Okay then, America, or just any listeners that know baseball, let us know how close were we

in trying to figure out what the analogy was. And now I get to play the beautiful jingle again. No, I've already got it, Jamie. You don't need to play it again. Oh, you're playing it again. I'll play it again. Okay. America, can we

guess it? Can we guess it? So, anyway, the point is, right, that I was trying to make... The point is, he got a bit lucky. He's sort of, he's walked it in, he has. Yeah, he's sold the second base, you could say. You could say, he got a third on an arrow, you could say. Yeah, and the catch had unfortunately died.

Exactly. Yeah, the trouble in his party was that very few knew what to make of Coolidge. He had been an afterthought of a vice-president pick, as I've already mentioned. Silent Cal was, as ever, an enigma. Who was he?

Was he progressive? He had voted for progressive things before. That's on his record. But actually, now I think about it, he's more conservative, isn't he? Some of his speeches recently have been very conservative. Is he anything? Who knows?

It was neither one that talks on both sides. Oh yes, very much so. Yes. One journalist at the time said Coolidge's speeches once he'd become president, and I quote, continue to be, in essence, a device for flabbergasting newspaper editorial writers without saying anything. To roar like a hurricane without letting loose any compromising ideas. Interesting.

It's quite a skill. It is a skill. To be able to do it without it being so obvious that people just go, what are you doing? That is a skill. Yeah. And either Coolidge was very good at this

or people weren't that bothered by it. Yeah. All in all, it was a reasonable start for Coolidge. People were still thinking more about the old president than this new quiet one. And he was just getting on with becoming the president. And then the scandals start to come out. Yay!

And it starts to become clear that Harding's cabinet was utterly, utterly corrupt. Now, Corledge tackled this problem as he had always tackled problems in the past. Ignored it all, but both. So that's really terrible. By doing very little. Pretty much ignoring it.

He did set up a special prosecutor to look into the T-Dome scandal, which I talked about last time. Yeah. But he did choose someone with ties to the oil industry to investigate. Ah. Yeah. Uproll was swift to that. and then Corlidge realised he'd made a mistake, so he chose a couple of men with no ties to oil at all, and that calmed the

dissenting voices down slightly. Good. And then he pretty much washed his hands of it. There you go, I've done my job. Nothing to do with me. That was Harding. Yeah, they're still in my cabinet, because I didn't change the cabinet, but that's fine. It's all done. I've done my job. The Senate didn't see it that way. They informed the President that the Navy Secretary, we've had a look into him, he has to go. He is very corrupt. He's a bad, bad man.

Well, Corlidge, however, refused to fire his Navy Secretary. But after a few days of pressure the navy secretary resigned anyway corledge told him you will go with the knowledge that your honesty and integrity have not been impugned that was not how this country saw it at all the country saw it as oh look at all these people who were in harding's cabinet they are up to their necks in illegal activity. Yeah. Yeah. If these men in the cabinet

were not formally charged with something, the general opinion was that they had gotten away with it, them. There were no innocents around. It's either the guilty who were caught or the guilty who weren't. So it's more like a witch hunt at this point. Well...

Even people that could be literally probably innocent but still want blood. No, it's only a witch hunt at this point um well even people that could literally probably innocent it's only one blood no it's only a witch hunt if you went to an actual coven of witches and then started to try and hunt the witches who were genuinely actually witches okay because they were all corrupt they were all up into their necks or up into their necks up to their necks in it the main man in this category was Doherty, who I've mentioned a few times before. This is Harding's good friend, campaign manager and attorney general. Doherty was clearly fully involved in the dodgy dealings that had been going on.

The Senate wished to talk to him. What were you up to then? How much of this do you know? Doherty just refused to cooperate with the investigation. Could you plead the fifth at this time? You can. That is definitely in the law. But it doesn't look good to refuse to cooperate with a Senate investigation. Not at all. So Coolidge was forced to at last fire Doherty because it became very obvious that he wasn't going to do anything apart from carry on being corrupt.

Almost daily, new stories were coming out on how the Republicans were taking bribes, sanning positions into all sorts of illegal schemes. The Democrats sat by loving every moment of this, as you can imagine. Oh, yeah. I mean, they had recently been crushed in the last presidential election and they saw this as their inevitable comeback. The next election is only just over a year away.

Coolidge would limp on because there's no way he's getting over this. He's presiding over a dying administration. We'll be able to walk into the next election, surely, said the Democrats. However... Your tone of voice tells me otherwise. Well, as the last of the investigations came to a close and the dust started to settle something became clear the public saw all the corruption as harding's corruption ah yeah i guess i see coolidge as well it's clean he's drained the swamp well coolidge and his

not my job to sort that out that was the last administration attitude, actually really pays off for him. Because he didn't get involved in any way with the investigations, because he wasn't talking about it. He just let them tick on in the background. He just didn't seem part of it. He was a different man. He wasn't involved. And to be fair, he wasn't involved. A lot of Republicans that were high up were,

but Corlidge's vice president was out of the loop. He wasn't in with that set. That's not important. Yeah, so he was able to just distance himself. On top of this, the economy was doing very well. It's always good when the economy is doing well. Yeah. People tend not to be quite as

upset. No. And it's nice to see us just keep getting stronger and stronger, which is exactly what we want to see. Yeah. And it's nice to see us just keep getting stronger and stronger, which is. Oh, yeah, yeah. Exactly what we want to see. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. So, in the White House, Corlidge soon settled into a routine. First thing in the morning, he would go for a walk. All very nice. Nice. Then he would have breakfast with his wife, Grace, and by nine, he started work. He had some meetings, answered correspondence, etc, etc. At midday, he would go and visit the tourists visiting the White House. Apparently, he's the last president to really do this,

because tourists start coming in droves as they start opening up the White House a bit more. After visiting tourists for a while, he'd go and have a nap. Hard work saying hello to tourists. He's recorded saying that his naps lasted no longer than an hour, but a source in the White House claims that they usually lasted all afternoon. That's funny. Apparently when he was woken up

after about four hours, he would say something along the lines of, is the country still here? Which again is either an example of his sense of humour, or it's a terrifying insight into Coolidge. Yes, yes. Yeah. Now, sometimes, while in his room in the afternoon, and he wasn't asleep, he would have a go on what he called his vibrating machine. Oh, okay. also known as thunderbolt oh okay yeah i i need no more information about that on to the next thing good should we just go on to the next yeah leave that i'm not bothered i don't

want to know anymore you don't want to know but it was designed by none other than kellogg of the cornflakes fame then which is ironic because weren't Corn Flakes a remedy for stopping you from, you know... Well, this vibrating machine had been installed into the White House recently. Whoa! Secretly. Hey, well... Oh, yes. Yeah, you don't want everyone knowing about that.

Don't want that in the newspapers, do you? Front page. Check out Thunderbolt, scandal at White House. Do you want to know what Thunderbolt is no i really don't it's not gonna be nowhere near as good as what's in my head it genuinely might be you know okay go on it's an exercise machine oh is it the thing where you put like a rubber band around you and it like shakes you no no weight loss no it's not that no it's more fun than that oh god it is an exercise horse an electronic one okay that's quite good yeah it is it's essentially a barrel with a saddle on top and a handle that when you turned it on would just jolt and move around a bit like a horse.

Why? Well, in the same way that you get exercise bikes, it's an exercise horse. But horse... But surely they get that much exercise riding a horse. The horse is exercising. I'm guessing the horse does more, yes. But the human on the horse still needs to be controlling movement and trying to balance themselves out. Still get some exercise from it, definitely.

All right. Anyway, when it was discovered, because like you say, you don't want news of this getting out, but it did, because when it was discovered that Coolidge had Thunderbolt, the vibrating machine, installed into his bedroom, he was widely mocked. The image of this very silent president retiring to his room to sit on a booking barrel was just far too amusing for anyone to take seriously that is really funny

it is really funny quite funny uh yeah i just imagine him there with his straight face just his head's still perfectly still a bit bit like an owl's head. Like a chicken. His body just moving all over the place. Occasionally say things like, easy Thunderbolt, easy. That's a good girl. So there you go. That's what he did in the afternoons when he went on his vibrating machine. Anyway, after a nap and a go on Thunderbolt,

apparently he would then dine with Grace and maybe some guests. Maybe did some work in the evening, but no one ever witnessed this. They did witness him sitting around a lot, smoking cigars in armchairs. Does work. Sometimes he watched one of those newfangled moving pictures. Yeah. So there you go. That was a typical day

for Coolidge. Wow. He gained a reputation for working the least of any known president. So far. So there you go. That's him. He worked mornings, basically. Even though barely. That's quite impressive. It is impressive. You can run a country

by doing very little. Well, we'll get into that later when we're judging him. But yeah. We also, you'll be pleased to know, get a couple of examples of these practical jokes that he apparently liked so much. Which, as I said last episode, were suspiciously absent from his early life. Despite the fact I kept being told in books that he loved practical jokes. But I finally found one. Do you want to hear it?

Yeah. He would ring the bell in his office. Oh, the scamp. And then he'd hide behind the curtain right yep what a prankster i i tried to find out what would happen next but i couldn't he either stayed behind the curtain until someone looked in saw there was no one there and then left and then he'd get out and just sit down and slowly smile to himself or he'd like jump out pretending to be a vampire who knows who knows i think though like the first few times the person didn't know where he was then eventually he's behind the curtain then by that they always knew he's behind the curtain yeah so it's quite stroppily coming through rip open the curtain say come on come on, get back to work, call in. Stop wasting my bloody time.

We've got a country to run. Well, the second one you might find more amusing. Oh, I don't know. Apparently, he would ring ahead to the White House to announce his arrival, but then go somewhere else. He just sounds like a nuisance. Yeah, I know.

It's like, you don't work hard enough to be able to do pranks like that. I'll quote him. According to his doctor at the time, Coolidge said to him, Do you know, I've never really grown up. I can't help but feel this was said incredibly deadpan, however. It was actually a medical concern. But who knows? Yeah. however, was actually a medical concern. But who knows? Now, before you think that it was all fun and games in the White House, however,

there are reports that the staff were particularly on edge under Coolidge. Ike Hoover, who was the White House usher at the time, no relation to the other Hoover, he said at the time the employees lived, and I quote, in fear and trembling lest they lose their jobs college kept them in a state of constant anxiety so that puts a slightly darker twist on these practical jokes oh it really does actually doesn't i'm gonna hide behind the curtain unless you find me in time you're fired fired. Oh. Who knows?

Yeah. Oh. This is what I mean by Coolidge is a really odd one. You can take so many stories in so many different ways. It's really hard to get a real idea of what it was like. You can't quite hit the target. Yeah, it's all very strange. Things between Coolidge and Grace, apparently,

were very strained at this time also. Corlidge didn't believe that it was the place of a woman to become involved in state affairs or politics at all. So he kept his home life and work completely separate, which is impressive when you live in the White House. Yeah, that is. Yeah. Apparently Grace barely even knew who was in the cabinet.

That's how out of the loop she was kept Usually the First Lady would be talking to the members of the cabinet And their wives And helping the whole social scene of Washington tick over So all that work that's not being done in the office Is being done in the dinner parties But no, none of that here Corlidge was also a little formal with his children,

as I hinted at last time. John is around 18 at this time, and he let his father know that he was invited to a tea dance in the middle of the day one day. So he might be slightly late for dinner, unfortunately, and wouldn't have time to dress formally. His father replied, you will remember that you are dining at the table

of the President of the United States and you will present yourself promptly and in proper attire. Yeah. I thought it didn't mix home and life. Home and work. That's his son. So? Yeah. His son. His wife and work. His son had a winkle, so that

was fine. Yeah. Not the place of a woman, apparently. Yeah. Anyway, how how did college get anything done if he's working so little i hear you wonder yeah well college was a master of one thing thunderbolt thunderbolt he was a master of two things thunderbolt and delegation ah but you've got to be a good delegator to lead oh yeah not too much where you look lazy though you look lazy, though. Well, it's... It's a fine balance. It's a fine balance that arguably he might have been able to balance on Thunderbolt all day long. But maybe he topples off the edge slightly.

His heads of the departments were there to run the departments. If it was small enough for the department to deal with, they could deal with it. If it was big enough for the president to deal with, he'd just pretend it wasn't going on. Yeah. In fact, I'll quote him this is uh the wise words of coolidge if you see 10 troubles coming down the road you can be sure that nine of them will run into the ditch before they reach you and you will only have to battle with one of them yeah i can't help but really agree with the way that Corlidge does things if he wasn't the president.

I feel there were some times where you've got to go, actually, no, I really do need to deal with stuff now. I don't know. I think I admire him more because of that. Because he manages to put actually a sensible philosophy into national... I'm just going to point out one thing. One of the

troubles coming down the road is the Great Depression. Oh, there, that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah. Okay. When you're perhaps running a bakery, that philosophy could work quite well. Try not to get too stressed about it.

Your buns will be fine. Yeah, exactly. The replacement part for the oven might not be here now, but it probably will be here in time. Don't stress about it. Yeah. The economy's about to fall flat on its face, the worst we've ever seen in history.

Yeah, be fine. But still, more about that later. Because, to be fair, Cornish's method really does seem to work at the time. The country was, according to many, doing very well. Now, these many, obviously obviously were mostly businessmen and politicians because the economy was getting better and better, business was good. If you were in the class that could benefit from that,

you were having a great time at this time. Or in other words, if you ignore the rising race problems in the country, which obviously many did, you could argue the country was having a bit of a golden age. Yes, utopia, as long as you're not black or a woman. Yeah, now don't worry, we will get back to the race problems in a moment, we're not going to ignore them, but let's deal with the economy first. As we saw in Harding's presidency, Mellon was currently in charge of the treasury, remember he was uh water wasn't he water melon oh

yeah i see you've got college's sense of humor melon was the third richest man in the country and he had certain views on how the economy should go now i know listeners who are listening to this back to back or just have a good memory will be thinking didn't you say second richest man in the country in the last episode? Why, yes, I did. But a certain Mr. Henry Ford had done very well for himself recently with his automobiles. Yes. And he had overtaken Mellon.

So you've got a very rich and popular Ford in the country at the moment. But still, Mellon, incredibly rich, fully on board with the idea of the old trickle-down economics. Let the rich get as rich as humanly possible, and then they would, in turn, obviously, spend that new wealth on their workers and the consumers,

and everyone wins. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, why should we spend time, effort and money as a government trying to improve the lives of our citizens in the United States when if we give the money to the rich, they'll do it for us? And you take my responsibility saying, so the poor are so poor, so it's not the government's fault, it's the rich people's fault.

Yeah. And actually... Quite clever in a way. It's not the rich people's fault because they are doing stuff. It's probably actually the poor people's fault when you think about it. They're lazy, to be fair. Exactly. Now, Coolidge, just like Harding, was fully on board with Mellon's ideas.

Taxes for the rich had to be drastically reduced if the poor wanted any chance of a happy life. Oh, for goodness sake. I'll quote here. If we had a tax, and this is Coolidge asking fellow Republicans in a speech near the start of his presidency. If we had a tax whereby on the first working day the government took 5% of your wages, on the second day 10% and so on, how many of you would continue to work on the last two days of the week? So an argument against the higher taxes for the richer incomes. But completely... Oh, this is an awful, awful analogy. Not a good analogy, yeah.

Because, of course, people are not taxed for their time. They are taxed for how much is earned, which I know. Analogies, you're meant to choose something different, but this isn't done fairly. And it doesn't double every day. I know, yeah. People obviously are paid an unequal amount. So to make this analogy actually work, what Corley should have said to this room full of rich party members is, you get to work

for one day, and for the last hour, you will be taxed 5%, the last 30 minutes, 10%, and the last five minutes at 20%. Meanwhile, the average person has to work all week long and they will be taxed at 5%. That actually makes the analogy work. And as you can see, it doesn't hold up. No, not in any way, shape or form. But still, people didn't want or need to think about how poor the analogy was too much.

Because if you say the words lower taxes, most people go, that sounds pretty good. Lower taxes. Yeah. Even if it does benefit the rich vastly more than anyone else, it sounds good. It's still money in my pocket. And people understandably like money in their pockets. Yeah. Now at this time, by estimates, around half the country were on the poverty line. There was a real chance that if you lived in the United States, you were struggling to feed yourself. Wow. But despite this fact, cordage and melon were seen to be doing very well with the economy, even with these people who were struggling to eat. Yeah. Because they could see the wealth of the country go up. I mean, it's the 1920s in America. You just had to look around

to see everything being built. The country was exploding with technology, with buildings. There's obviously a lot of stuff going on, and it's all very exciting. How could this possibly be bad? The economy is solid as a rock, and this is brilliant. So, yeah, they were riding a wave of popularity, but don't let that make you think that everyone was rolling in cash. Most people weren't. Still, despite the fact that their tax plans were actually quite popular with the public,

Corlidge and Mellon had to fight a hostile Senate to get their tax ideas through. Now, although the Senate was Republican, Corlidge had a problem. No one really knew who he was in Congress. Now, if you remember, Corlidge had not spent any time as vice president building up links with Congress, and it really showed. If you remember Barton, his mate Barton? Yes. Yeah, with Barton's help, Coolidge had been packaged and sold to the country as the strong and silent type, unflappable and on the side of the public. In short, he was popular as Roosevelt had been before him due to his personality, fictitious or otherwise,

rather than his standing in the party. Well, he's the equivalent of a golem, isn't he? You could just implant your own personality onto him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's whatever you want him to be. Yeah. So, Gulledge never really managed to get a handle on Congress. He had to fight his own party as well as the Democrats. Now, in the case of the tax cuts, the Democrats wanted the top tax bracket to come down from 70% during World War I. Good chunky top tax bracket because they needed the money. They were at war.

They wanted it to drop all the way down to 44%. The Republican Party wanted it even lower to 35%. Mellon and Coolidge wanted 25%. Wow! That's a massive deduction. Oh, yeah. Eventually, a compromise was agreed to.

The richest would pay 40% on their money over a certain amount. As you can imagine, big business are very, very happy with this. Not only were they making huge amounts of savings on taxes, but Coolidge's beliefs in small government worked very well for them also. Corlidge started appointing men to lead departments that they did not want to exist. For example, William Humphrey was placed in charge of the Federal Trade Commission. Humphrey's described his own department as, I quote, an instrument of oppression, misbalance, and injury.

So, yeah, just to gut the government, he was purposely placing people in charge of those departments that would not run them well. Excellent. Yeah. Many antitrust suits were brought forward under Corlidge, it must be said, fighting the monopolies. But as was becoming more common under Corlidge, over a third were dismissed. The fines were reduced when companies were found guilty. And to sum up, the idea of the government curtailing the dangers of excessive monopolies was pretty much over. That whole

push after the Gilded Age to try and stop the excesses, it's all falling apart again. So that's the brief look at the economy as the election started to loom. Generally, people were happy. But you can see some undercurrents of tension.

I guess in this time as well, there was a lot of money going to the stock market as well by this point. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Wall Street were very pleased at this point. Yes. Yeah. However, as we have seen in the last few episodes, tensions in the country were still running strong. Despite what some people try to claim, history is not all about the economy.

And people's actual lives are also quite important. And yeah, there's a lot of tension going on. The Red Summer's over and the first Red Scare was starting to subside as people realised that teams of communist students were not actually about to take over the government.

But the racism was still going as strong as ever. Oh, yeah, it was. Oh, yes. In fact, in terms of actual terrorist organisation, it was arguably stronger than ever because the second clan, now approaching 10 years old, was growing rapidly. Full-time paid members were recruiting young men across the country.

These young men would pay for membership and then receive their costume. The local branch would then keep half of the recruitment fees and then the other half was sent to a national level. The second clan, realising that bigotry could be an inclusive business after all, opened their doors. Of course. Yeah, the first clan, all you needed to do was really hate black people

and then you could get your ticket in. But now, if you hated Jews or Catholics, you're more than welcome as well. Catholics? Oh yeah, there's been a lot of, maybe it's something that I've not gone into much, but there's been a lot of anti-Catholic feeling. Don't forget the racism and bigotry

towards the Irish immigrants coming in. A lot of that was based around Catholicism. There was, in times we have covered, there's been a genuine fear that the Pope was trying to take over the country using Catholic immigrants coming into the country, that kind of ridiculousness. Yeah, I mean, obviously, like, their main export was racism against black people in the Klan.

But they were also selling hatred against Jews and the Catholics at this time as well. Well, yeah, gotta have that. Now, due to this, unlike the first K, the second clan was not contained to the South. And also, importantly, was not contained to one political party. If you really branch out on your forms of bigotry, you can really become more inclusive, can't you? Yeah, it's true. So, in the mid-twenties, it's estimated that the membership was around five million people. Ooh, that's a lot of people.

Yeah. Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon all had very strong factions within them. And within these states and others, many politicians at all levels had their positions thanks to the Klan campaigning on their behalf. There was real genuine political movement going on here. That's really interesting

because i i don't know i i don't know much about the clan to be honest and the bit silly costumes um but um i would always assume that it was more of the southern states thing first clan yes very much so but it's more yeah now now they're letting bigots in from all over the place who hate pretty much anyone then yeah especially main it surprised me bigots in from all over the place who hate pretty much anyone. Then, yeah. Especially big cities in particular. Poor people. People struggling to find jobs. Yeah.

Seeing immigration. People of different religions. The age-old stereotype of Jewish people pulling strings in the background. All of that nonsense. All of that is just being used. And the Klan grows across the country. This is no longer a southern thing anymore. Now, politicians backed by the Klan distanced themselves from the lynchings, the beatings, the arson,

the just murder of innocent people. That was a few rogue elements, they would claim. A few bad apples. Exactly. But few were fooled, if any. Everyone knew what the Klan were up to, and everyone knew that a lot of politicians were in the Klan's pocket, if not fully, literally paid up members themselves. Now, the organisation was powerful enough that the two major parties at a national level were cautious in what they said, not wishing to upset any support. The Democrats,

as we've seen over the last couple of decades, have been going through a bit of an internal revolution. What kind of party were they exactly? Were they the Conservative Party for the elites still, or were they the progressive party of Brian, who's still knocking around, although not trying to be president anymore? Most of the Klan, it must be said, were still Democrats at this time, but the strong progressive faction within the Democrats displeased a lot of the Klan members. Yeah. Yes, Wilson had been progressive, but he was also incredibly racist, which had mollified the group. Yeah. Yeah. But that said, there were many in the Democrats who were progressive and not racist, or at least not for the standards of the day. The Republicans, however, thought many of the Klan members. Yeah, they were the party of Lincoln, but that was a long time ago.

And Coolidge had recently, soon after becoming president, pushed through a very strong immigration law, essentially closing the doors of the country. This is the strongest immigration laws we have seen yet. So they liked that. Plus, the Republicans mostly supported prohibition, which the Klan also supported. To a number of the Klan, the Republicans no longer seemed necessarily to be the enemy. So that's the lay of the land as the election comes into view. Many of the Republicans assumed that Corlidge, like I say, was a placeholder president. However, they underestimated his popularity with the public

and his own resolve to get some legitimacy. Corlidge didn't want to just be a caretaker for a year and then disappear. He was there now. He wanted to stay. It's a cushy job. If anything, it would just be a pain uninstalling Thunderbolt. So. Yeah, I'd have to get out of the house having seen as well. Yeah.

Now, the main opposition to be nominated for running for the Republicans actually came from none other than Henry Ford. Wow. Now, this makes a lot of sense in a society that had increasingly declared that if you had a big business, you would win the American dream. You automatically must be a genius and exceptionally hardworking. So it makes sense that if you're a really good businessman, you are going to be a really good politician. The country will definitely do well under you. It was a common thought for the time. So Ford's name was doing the rounds across the whole country as a potential president. Some in the Republicans thought about drafting Ford in to run against Coolidge at the convention,

in fact, despite the fact that Ford had previously run for a Senate seat, which he'd lost as a Democrat. Yeah, Ford clearly has no real allegiance to either party, but he's a popular name and he might get rid of Coolidge. However, Coolidge soon saw off this threat. He met with Ford in the White House in a meeting that we have no details about. Soon after that meeting, Ford announced that Coolidge was a fantastic candidate and had his full support. Oh, and Ford had some promises about some factories in Alabama,

something to do with privatising the hydroelectric power. It's just details, details. So we don't need to know those details. Minutiae that doesn't need talking about right now. Exactly. All you need to know is that there was a meeting, and in the meeting Ford realised Corlidge was the man for the job. Yeah.

Yeah. Amazing how it works. All fine. So with no Ford to worry about, Corlidge was unopposed, essentially. He received the nomination from the party unanimously. No one could go up against him. He was too popular. So a somewhat reluctant party, or at least some members of the party, but everyone got behind him. The Democratic Convention, however, in contrast, was a hot mess.

Nice. Oh, yeah. Far more than the Republicans, the Democrats were being internally torn in two by this ideological split of theirs. And also, they're being split into externally from pressures from the Klan. The two forerunners were Smith, a Catholic man who was vocally anti-Klan and anti-prohibition,

and running against him was a man we've met before. It's none other than McAdoo. McAdoo. Yeah, that's the one. That's if you remember Wilson's son-in-law. Being a member of the Wilson family, you'd probably not be surprised to learn that McAdoo was pro-clan, pro-prohibition.

Yeah. Oh, and he was also, on top of that, involved in the Teapot Dome scandal, even though he was a Democrat. Splendid. He'd taken some money to look the other way. Yeah, so forced to choose between a racist, corrupt, anti-drinking man and a Catholic, the Democrats were torn and could not decide.

Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, dear. A whopping 102 ballots were cast over 10 days. As far as I'm aware, that is a record date, if not of all time. Well, it's so tricky. I mean... Yeah, I mean, he is proven to be a liar, a cheat, a racist.

But the other man is a religion that is technically the same religion as us, just a different denomination. It's hard. It's very hard. I mean, there are good people on both sides. There are, aren't there? It's hard. Anyway, eventually, as per usual in these situations, a dark horse candidate gets put forward, a compromise. A man named Davies got the nomination. Davies started campaigning by denouncing the Klan.

Yeah. And in a political move, called upon Coolidge to do the same. Nice. Davies, by the way, was a compromise that worked because although he denounced the Klan publicly, he was, and I quote a recent biography here, sufficiently retrograde on racial policies to appeal to the party's white supremacists. Ah, so all tall but not really. Yeah. What I love is the fact that even in 2006 this biography was written.

The verbal somersaults that people go through to avoid calling someone racist is amazing. It's become disturbingly obvious that it is far more taboo in modern society to accuse someone of being racist than actually being racist. Yeah. Very depressing. So to just summarise that, Davies might publicly denounce the Klan, but he was a massive racist. So, yeah, the Democrats could get behind him. So anyway, in the political move, once Davies denounced the Klan, the pressure was on Coolidge to do the same. Now, obviously, in the North, there was a lot of Klan support of Republicans. Coolidge wasn't too keen on publicly saying things that would upset some people who

would vote for him. So the closest he came to actually denouncing the Klan was to have a spokesman say for him, the president is not a member of that order and is not in sympathy with the aims and purposes thank you ding dong that's it's not great no yeah that's that's cordage's views as ever yet again it's very hard to say what he's thinking uh but it's not great to say the least is it i mean don't get me wrong we're not talking wilson levels of utter racism here but i i come on i mean that is a literal terrorist organization growing within your country perhaps maybe stand up to it maybe as president maybe well i thought president should do yeah anyway he saw dealing with racism as a not the government's job you'll be shocked to learn because what not the government's job, you'll be shocked to learn.

Because what is the government's job? Yeah. Money. Race difficulties are, and I'll quote Coolidge here, to a large extent, a local problem. What? Yeah. An amazing statement, which yet again is something that means literally nothing. Name one thing that's not a local problem to some extent.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to point out, and this is side the point in a way, if you go on Coolidge's Wikipedia page, in the very first paragraph, it mentions that although he does not go down in history as one of the greatest presidents, he is often praised for his dedication in the area of racism and ending racism. I haven't heard anything like that so far. Yeah, I'm very confused. I really am. Anyway, another anti-lynching bill was put forth, you'll be pleased to know. Oh, is that why he's praised? Um, no. Someone else has a go at trying to actually stop all these

lynchings going on. Yeah, Corlidge did very little to help it pass. It did not pass. It just wasn't on Corlidge's to-do list. As you can imagine, this was like a federal bill, a federal level. Corlidge, no, no, small government. And once, still talking about race relations here, whilst talking to a predominantly black audience,

Corlidge told those listening that he admired their progress. But, and I quote, the Anglo-Saxon race has been centuries in reaching its present position and that the Negro could not and must not expect to bridge that chasm in just a century. Yes, your face is saying it all. That's not okay. It's really not okay, is it? It's still this idea that black citizens of America were somehow not living in the same country as everyone else

and had some catching up to do. Bloody hell. Which will probably take more than 100 years. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that's not good. Although it should be noted, this quote comes directly from Barton,

and maybe this is Barton making up a story that he knew many readers would approve of because many readers were horribly racist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there is that. Still, if that is the case, it was in Corledge's name

and he certainly didn't object to it being said. So, yeah, not great. Yeah, most black people who were able to vote, because obviously voting suppression is still going on, were still very much behind the party of Lincoln. They're still Republican. But the cracks are really starting to show now. The civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois, said,

May God write us down as asses, if ever again we are found putting our trust in either the Republican or the Democratic parties. So yeah, as you can see, cracks definitely starting to show. Yeah, it's not looking great. Anyway, the election's hotting up. It was going very well for college, but then tragedy struck. Tragedy. Yeah, not good. The president's two sons were playing tennis in the White House courts.

Was the judge annoyed? Exactly how bad do you think this could go? Well, there's an ultimate bad. Yeah? Like, death. Yeah, one of them's dead in a week, Jamie. How? What were they playing with? TNT? They walk onto the tennis court, a week later one of them's dead. a week jamie how what were they playing with tnt they walk onto the tennis court a week later one of them's dead calvin jr had not bothered to put socks on did he get trench foot not trench foot he soon developed a blister on his toe smallpox not smallpox two days after this he developed a high fever and red streaks appeared on his leg. Tests were conducted. That's an infection. The blood blister on his toe had let in bacteria. A staph infection occurred. Oh, yeah, quite a lot of antibiotics for that.

Yeah, there's a problem with that. Alexander Fleming is currently the head of bacteriology in the University of London, and although he had noticed a couple of years previously that nasal mucus stops bacterial growth slightly, this discovery went nowhere. In fact, Fleming is four years away from discovering penicillin. It's a shame he's growing all these trees while he's in his back garden. He has no idea. Yeah. Yeah, Calvin Jr. became delirious. His family watched on in horror as it became clear that he wasn't going to make it.

Wow. Yeah. Such a small thing. Yeah. Yeah. It really brings home how important antibiotics are you could die from a blister yes yeah calvin jr died in the evening of june the 7th the democratic convention that was going on at this time and it was called to a halt immediately the country mourned with the president and his wife many remarks later that coolidge was a changed man after this i'll quote coolidge here when he went the power and his wife. Many remarked later that Coolidge was a changed man after this.

I'll quote Coolidge here. When he went, the power and the glory of the presidency went with him. Oh. Yeah. Still, the election carried on as the family mourned. And with the Republicans more unified, and with the economy strong, and with the backing of the big business, obviously. The Republicans, by the way, had four times the money to spend on the election than the Democrats. And also with public sympathy with Coolidge, because of what he's just gone through.

Understandably, the Republicans won in a novel landslide. An easy victory for Coolidge. Not only did they beat the Democrats by 15 million votes to 8 million votes. Ooh. Yeah. That does not account for the fact that there's actually still the quite popular third progressive party at this time. And they had got 4.8

million votes and they get a lot of their support by arguably Republican voters. So if it wasn't for the third party, they possibly would have done even better. But even then, the Republicans get more votes than the Democrats and the progressives

put together. It was just a drumming of the opposition. Electoral College, Republicans 382, Democrats 136. So, Corlidge is now president in his own right. He's actually been voted in, and he starts by doing some reorganization. To begin with, he puts forth a man named Warren to be his new attorney general. However, after puts forth a man named Warren to be his new Attorney General. However, after riding such a wave of popularity to victory, Cordage seems to have forgotten that many in his party weren't actually that keen on him. They certainly weren't keen on Warren, who was currently under investigation for antitrust practices. Excellent. Yeah, it's just a good appointment there. Just another corrupt businessman just being popped in a cushy job.

Attorney General, why not? Splendid. Yeah. Due to this and the lack of any prep work whatsoever with Congress, when it came to confirm the appointment, the Senate was actually tied. I mean, this should have walked through, and it didn't. But it's fine. If there's a tie in the Senate, the vice president gets the deciding vote.

And obviously the new vice president was going to vote in Corlidge's favour. Obviously. Unfortunately for him, the new vice president was having a nap at the time. Oh, wonderful. Yes. He was quickly awoken and he rushed to the Capitol building, but it was too late. The voting was over. Warren's nomination was defeated and Corlidge was left very embarrassed that his first move as the president after being elected had been shot down by his own party.

Oh dear. Yeah. Despite this setback, however, Corlidge soon started to get back into his routine. He carries on with his delegation. When the undersecretary of State came to him about the administration's China policy, Corlidge replied, I don't know anything about this. You do, Mr. Grew, and you're in charge. You settle the problem, I'll back you up. Nice. Yeah. I'm still torn. Part of me goes, come on, you're the president, you should be more involved. Part

of me goes, fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Still talking about international affairs, let's talk about international affairs, shall we? The biggest thing to Cross College's desk in the early days of his second term was the World Court. The World Court was created as the judicial arm of the League of Nations and was created to try and keep nations from going to war with each other

to settle their differences. Fair enough. We can settle it in a world court, thought some leaders in the world. Yeah. War torn Europe. Obviously, we're very keen to see this go well. We don't want another war anytime soon. Yeah, that'd be awful.

That'd cost a lot of money. World War I. Well, I'm glad we've seen the end of that. Yes. Woo. Yeah. But the United States obviously had a very different view on the League of Nations and anything involved with it. They were very cautious about joining the League and in the end decided against it.

Well, they were just as cautious about joining this court. Now, joining the court was not the same as joining the League of Nations. It's not full-up signing up membership. Many in the United States saw this as a largely positive thing. Harding and then Corledge had, again, cautiously expressed their support. It's the least we could do kind of attitude. Since we're not joining the League, let's go on. They so desperately want us to join.

Maybe we'll give some legitimacy to the court if we join. The Senate took up the issue and a few conditions were created before the US would join. First of all, it needed to be made really, really super, super clear, like in really big font, that joining the court did not mean the US were in any way thinking about joining the League of Nations. No, we're not. We're not doing it. No. Secondly, there needed to be several amendments that really, really limited the court's authority over the United States In other words, yeah, we'll join the court we'll make it seem more legitimate

but we don't want you having the power to say anything over us at all This is a one-way street But we'll have the power for you Yes The League of Nations saw this list of demands read them over a bit Interesting, they think Let's invite the US to formally discuss this.

Let's see if we can hammer out some of the kinks. Yeah. Perhaps we can come to an understanding. When Corlidge heard that the United Nations wanted to come to an understanding, he replied, I don't see any necessity for discussion on our part. Ooh.

Yeah. And then the whole thing pretty much dies adef after this. It just dies away. There's a bit more wrangling but it doesn't go anywhere ultimately. So there's no compromise there at all? No, not really. The United States just decide not to join. It's almost the mentality of

look what we've done. Look how amazing we are. Look how rich we're becoming. We don't need anyone else. We're fine. Seeing it from the United States' perspective, though, they will be seeing the United Nations and the court that goes with it as the old world still bickering and fighting. Yes, that's true. What's that got to do with the new world?

What's that got to do with the United States? Why should we be drawn into their messy squabbling? Yeah. Signing up to laws that will have no say in from half a world away. Didn't we fight a revolution to get away from that kind of thing? That's a very, very good argument. Yeah. However, the counter-argument was

seriously, people need to stop fighting these wars that are getting worse and worse as technology improves. Surely we should be coming up with some international diplomatic approaches that will stop the fighting. Maybe that's a good idea. Because it would be awful in under 20 years' time we invent a weapon that could destroy entire cities.

Exactly. Imagine that. During a novel world war. Yeah. Anyway, elsewhere internationally, college was having to deal with problems with the Americas. The economic and literal invasions had been increasing. The United States was pretty

much running an estimated 10 different countries at this time in Central and South America by simply walking Marines in, aiding in their elections and politicians just suddenly making certain decisions that aided certain

businesses. Coolidge did, early in his second term, to be fair, recall the Marines from just suddenly making certain decisions that aided certain businesses. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Coolidge did, early in his second term, to be fair, recall the Marines from the Dominican Republic. But elsewhere, the dominance of the United States was starting to really strain diplomatic relations across the continent. It's like an economic empire.

Yeah. Rather than a... Yeah, although there are actual invasions going on. Yeah, yeah. But also actual invasions going on yeah yeah but also economic invasions as well yeah what's what's happening here unfortunately is just far too sprawling and complex to fit into the narrative of our podcast uh maybe in season two we could find someone that will give us a good narrative and we can look into it in more detail but for now let's just take a very brief look at just one example of many so let's take a look at nicaragua which we've come across a few

times before now the united states had helped topple the president of nicaragua in 1909 claiming claiming that they were helping to protect the lives of all the American citizens that were there. Of course. But in actuality, it was all wrapped up in prospects of the Nicaraguan canal that was still being mooted. Then, in 1912, a revolt against the US propped-up government led to the US puppet president inviting the United States to go in and put down the revolution. So that for the last 13 years, from the time we are in the podcast, Nicaragua had been fully occupied by the US Marines. So, like, full-on invasion here.

Yeah. So, we get to 1925. Corledge is now president. And the United States Marines have just overseen a set of elections. The results went the right way, shall we say. Wonderful. Yeah. Splendid. And it was deemed that the country was now stable enough to pull out.

The US troops would leave, and the regime that the US had put in place would be able to keep the United States business interests in place. Wonderful. Excellent. As soon as the last Marine left, literally foot on to the boat, the entire country exploded.

Yeah. Civil War just erupts. It's strange. If you had over a decade of occupation and then the occupiers leave, surprise, surprise, Civil War starts when the occupiers leave. The US puppet president was overthrown and the country set up a new leader, a military dictator. Oh dear. Yeah. Corlidge decided, okay, let's send the troops back then because that's a problem. Let's go and set up a new government, one that would protect the

business that the United States have there properly this time. And this is what happens. The Marines invade once more in 1926. However, the new puppet president had trouble because the old vice president from the old US regime had fled to Mexico and still wanted power. Mexico were going through their own problems and diplomatic strains with the United States, which we touched on slightly in Harding's episode.

So as you can see, it's all a little bit of a mess. As Coolidge told reporters, and I quote, this government is not taking sides one way or another in relation to this revolution. Apart from the literal troops that we've sent in to support one side. Yeah, yeah. Peacekeepers. Of course. Congress, to begin with, were not keen on drawing this conflict out. It just didn't look good. It looked a little bit imperial.

It had been going on for the best part of a year now. It's not been sorted. Coolidge, determined to set Ikaragua on the track that would most benefit the United States, spoke to Congress. Again, I quote, There is no question that if the revolution continues, American investments and business interests in Nicaragua will be seriously affected, if not destroyed.

Many in Congress were not happy about this. Coolidge has just said the quiet part out loud. It's meant to be about helping US citizens that happen to be in the area. You're not meant to just say you were in it for the business. But, I mean, this is Coolidge. It's just to the point. And the point he made was a strong one, because he made it to a room full of rich businessmen, who were also politicians. Yeah. Yeah. Congress got behind him. Coolidge sent out more Marines.

However, due to pressures to find a diplomatic solution, Coolidge also sent an ambassador down to see what he could do. The ambassador, a man named Stimson, was given a clear instruction from Corlidge. I'll quote, If you find a chance to straighten the matter out, I want you to do so. Kill them. Kill all of them. Well, with that really, really precise and detailed brief, Stimson heads on down. With the carrot of a diplomatic agreement and the stick of more Marines in their country,

Stimson was able to actually bring together a very dubious coalition government. It was agreed that there would be an election in 1928 and then another election in 1932 And if they go the right way I mean, if they go well, if they're fair The United States would withdraw in 1933 It was agreed upon

And there you go That's as much as what happens in college's presidency I don't want to go too far in the future But just so you know, things don't go well The internal tensions that this occupation caused resulted in decades of civil war within the country. Eventually, the family that the US backed at this time were overthrown in the 1960s. Wow. Yeah. And then things spiraled again. And yeah. So anyway, this is one example of how united states dominance over the

continent was going for the other countries in the continent like i say you can easily tell another nine similar stories of this time i just don't have time to go into it all anyway the other countries in the americas were starting to get a little bit fed up with this in havana in 1928 during during the International Conference of American States, Coolidge attended, only the second time he ever left the country. He went to Cuba and he delivered the keynote address. He highlighted how the countries of the Americas had far more in common than what separated them, how they needed to work together. It was a rip-roaring speech. A room full of global leaders and diplomats watched on, I can only assume, in a grim silence.

Corledge then left the conference, looking forward to getting home, rubbing his hands together. Excellent, that's that done. Job done. He left a delegate behind to actually iron out all the details, but he'd done his keynote speech, so off he went home, as did many of the leaders, and just left behind ambassadors to deal all the details, but he'd done his keynote speech, so off he went home, as did many of the leaders, and just left behind ambassadors to deal with the details.

Mexico, El Salvador, and in particular Argentina, then got together and proposed a resolution. The conference would formally denounce any country interfering with any other country in the Americas. And whilst they did that, they would all really pointedly stare at the United States. One after another, the delegates from each country in attendance rose and offered their full support for the resolution. Charles Hughes, the delegate that had remained on behalf of the

United States, sort of squirmed in his seat for a while. However, when Hughes got up to speak to defend the United States and their involvement in the Americas, the power of the United States at the time was in full display. Because due to his speech and also a few little backroom manoeuvres, it was suddenly decided that all discussions on interventionalism could wait until the next conference. Excellent. Yeah. We'll kick that can down the road. Yeah.

Still, Corlidge is back in the United States, and he's dealing with internal matters by this point. Things are still looking good in the United States for many. Yeah. The world was moving forward. Everything was all very exciting. In fact, a young man named Charles Lindbergh Yay!

Yeah. had been the first person to fly over the Atlantic in an aeroplane. He'd flown from New York to Paris in a mere 33.5 hours. Oh, that's insane. Celebration of this achievement caught the imagination of the country. Festival atmosphere. Soon enough, Lindbergh's stamps were being created. A national holiday was called for.

Lindbergh met with Coolidge. Full military escort had returned him home, and a parade was had by the Washington Monument. All very exciting stuff. Corlidge gave a speech and talked about Lindbergh's unconquerable will, inspired by the imagination and spirit of his

Viking ancestors. So there you go. Nice. Vikings known for that New York to Paris flight. Yes. One journalist wrote at the time, Lindbergh has shown us that we are not rotten to the core, but morally sound and sweet and good. Yeah.

This, of course, obviously is before it was discovered that if Lindbergh loved one thing more than aviation, it was hating Jewish people and being a loved one thing more than aviation it was hating Jewish people and being a Nazi sympathiser. I didn't realise that. Oh yes. I'd forgotten that. Yeah that's a shame isn't it? Yeah yeah it's taking the shine off that picture. Yeah but no one no one realised that at the time. It was all it was all celebrations uh it was technological advancements look what we've achieved. Corlidge used the celebratory atmosphere to his advantage. He very much hitched his wagon onto this this idea that the country was just doing very well

and the country were behind him. So he decided you know what let's give this tax thing another go. He was backed by the very powerful American Bankers League. However the American Bankers League had had a bit of a bit of a chinwag and they'd come up with a name change to the far more reassuring name of the American Taxpayers League that sounds less corporation and sinister doesn't it absolutely yeah anyway with the Taxpayer League working lobbying and with Mellon and Corlidge's popularity at the time, everyone started working hard to push for a new tax reform. The taxes would be taken down to literally zero for most people, and the very richest in the country would pay only 20% on the extra wealth

they earned. Wow. Yeah. Corlidge also went in hard on his philosophy of small government during the worst environmental disaster in the Gulf Coast in all American history, bar Hurricane Katrina. This is the Great Flood of 1927. Now, this started due to heavy rain in the central basin of the Mississippi in 1926. The river slowly but very surely swelled over the next few months. Over 140 levees broke. Local workers started to work around the clock to attempt to hold the floods back, but to no avail.

The Mississippi's big, and when it floods, it floods big. In April, a levee broke so suddenly that it led to the deaths of over 100 workers who were working along the river, mostly from poor black neighborhoods. And obviously these were the communities most affected. An estimated 200,000 black citizens were left homeless and living in refugee camps. An estimated 400,000 people on top of this had severe disruption to their lives. Wow. Yeah, this was a big environmental disaster. Yeah. Coolidge got right on the case. He told Hoover that he was in charge and went and had a cigar. Excellent.

However, many people wanted Coolidge to do a bit more than this. Maybe go and visit the sites, Coolidge. Maybe go and, I don't know, just go and reassure people it's going to be okay. Something, Coolidge, do something. Get off that horse and just, oh... Seriously. Anything to aid the country at all. He doesn't do it, does he? Well, Coolidge flatly refused. He feared that if he did that, more pressure

would be put on the federal government. It was not the federal government's job to help these people, it was the state's. It's a local issue. It is a local issue. Now, some celebrated Coolidge's approach, saying that it would do the state's good to have some freedom to organise their own support. However, most, especially obviously in the areas actually hit, were utterly appalled by this.

In fact, I'll quote one journalist at the time, Corlidge either has the coldest heart in America or the dullest imagination, and we are ready to believe he has both. Yeah, starting to agree with that a little bit. Yeah. That was around this time. Whilst on holiday in the Black Hills, he needed a break. Yeah, apparently I checked.

It didn't seem like he went to Deadwood, though. Oh. I did check. If he did go, I couldn't find mention of it. Yeah, he's on holiday. Corlidge gathered a group of reporters around. He sat there silently and pulled out some slips of paper and handed them

out, and then left the room. On the bits of paper, it said the following. I do not choose to run for president in 1928. Oh. Corlidge just refused to take any questions after this, but eventually, he would point out that if he ran for another term and got it, he would be president

for ten years, which was too long for any man. And so there you go. College announced he was stepping down. Incidentally, as a little insight into his and Grace's relationship, Grace was asked later on that day about her husband's announcement, and her reply was, what announcement? Oh, splendid. Yeah. Anyway, for the next next year he was a lame duck

president some of the stuff covered already in the episode actually happened past this point but for narrative reasons i've juggled it around a bit but mostly everything wound down after this point he still struggled to get on with congress he still pushed for the low taxes and small government. Oh, and he went to Hollywood and visited MGM Studios. Yeah, the film Road to Romance was being filmed at this time. Apparently, this film, like all the greats do, had a trained bear called Bruno in it. Splendid. Golden age of Hollywood. Unfortunately for the studio, not only did they have to deal with the president visiting that day, they also had to deal with the fact that the bear

escaped and went on a rampage. Oh, fantastic. Apparently, Coolidge found this hilarious and quite uncharacteristically spent his time laughing at the scene of people attempting to keep him safe from a rampaging bear. It is quite ridiculous, though, when you think about it.

It's the rampaging bear going through a Hollywood set and lots of Secret Service men trying to desperately protect the president, who is just laughing at them. Yeah. It's a farcical end. Yes, it is. Although I should point out, when this happened, I saw two different cases. I read somewhere that this happened after his presidency,

but I read somewhere that it happened during. So I'm not 100% certain, but it happened. Not exactly sure when. It's a great little story for the end. Anyway, once Coolidge did retire, he went back to his small little house that he'd come from. He smoked cigars on his porch. He watched those passers-by watching him. And he lived his life of retirement

and then watched the entire country fall apart around him. Excellent. Yeah. He died in 1933, saying to a friend shortly beforehand, I feel I no longer fit in with these times. 1933. 1933. Wow. That's called a just presidency.

Interesting. That's right. Statesmanship! Okay, judging him's going to be a bit weird. It's really hard. But let's give it a go. Statesmanship. Good.

Right. Positives. If you supported his views on government and taxes, you were happy. And I need to keep reminding myself of this because it's going to become more and more obvious than it's already been so far. My personal biases are definitely starting to show through the more modern we get. Well, it's going to happen. It's natural. Yeah, definitely. And I'm just baffled by this idea that running a country like that is a good idea.

But there were lots of people in America who thought it was a good idea, and they would have been very happy with their president doing low taxes, small government. So if you supported him, you would have been very happy. The tax break benefited the rich hugely more than anyone else, and the trickle-down economics as per usual did not work.

But it must be said that most people were better off under his leadership due to the tax cuts. Most people were happy with them. You can argue how fair they were or you want, but it doesn't change the fact that most people approved of them and people were happy. He defended the amount of time he spent not working by pointing out that it was in the nation's interest that he had long naps. Because the more he napped, the less he would be able to initiate

as the government he really believed in small government the less he did the better he was doing his job it wasn't just laziness this was a genuine political philosophy of his strategy yeah he did not want the government to be doing things so i think that's uh that's what i've got for positive let's uh let's go on to negative um back to the economy here he resigned just before the crash and we've not talked about the crash because it's not happened yet it's also very hard to judge i mean as ever it's very easy to put too much importance on the person in the white house in regards to the economy how much impact do they really have is it wider issues but that said harding and then Coolidge and Mellon's approach to the economy

certainly did not help the upcoming crash. No, this has been like a systematic, almost like a cancer going through the economy for decades. I mean, not being psychic, Coolidge couldn't have predicted it. No one was sitting around predicting the crash was coming. No one foresaw this. So it's not like he was warned and he ignored the dangers. coming. No one foresaw this. So it's not like he was warned and he ignored the dangers. No. But, on the whole, the government should do nothing to help the

suffering and the businesses can do whatever they like attitude is going to cause a lot of suffering in the near future. Yeah, it almost... From that... The equation to get that philosophy of big business, you almost have to ignore the factor of human

greed. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, for all Wilson's faults, of which he had many, if he had been president in the years leading up to the crash, can't help but feel that the blow would have been cushioned a little bit more. Possibly. Yeah. In fact, I've got a quote from Coolidge here to sum up yet again his philosophy of government. Unfortunately, human nature cannot be changed by an act of legislature. It is too much assumed that because an abuse exists, it is the business of the national government to remedy it. But I'd argue if the national government is not attempting to right the abuses made on its citizens, what is the point in having a national government?

That is true. So there you go. The other thing, race issues. That's not great. I mean, we've seen a lot worse really quite recently, but come on now. He does nothing to try and put down the growing terrorists in his own country attempting to suppress democratic freedoms.

Yeah, it's the bare minimum taken to extremes. Yeah, he doesn't make anything in any way better. It just doesn't seem to concern him. And it really should be because it's very obviously very bad. Should mention here, because I didn't mention it in the main narrative, under Coolidge, all Native Americans become citizens. Yeah, if you lived on a reservation, then you are now a citizen. That had very little to do with the president, however,

which is why I didn't include it in the main narrative. It's just something that was passed during his time, although he didn't oppose it. It is quite complex to go through, though. It had supporters and detractors from people all through the United States, including Native Americans, who spouted it as eroding their identity. But many were for it because of more rights. Yeah, protections of rights.

So, yeah, it was a hotly debated topic, but important, so I thought I'd mention it now. Then there's some stuff to do with Europe that I've not gone into. Dealing with Germany, doors going over, dealing with the debts there, which I just did not have time to go into that. And I figured that's really fascinating. It's fascinating. But I took the executive decision that that is more European history. And yes, although it definitely has an impact going into World War II,

cordage wasn't on the forefront. Cordage said, go and do whatever you need to do to get it done. And then sat back. So, yeah. Because the crash that happens directly again influences Germany because America goes, oh, you know that money we lent you? Yeah. Could we have it back? Having that back, please. Yeah, exactly. But no, that's going on as well. again influences germany because america goes oh you know that money we lend to you yeah could we

could we have that back please yeah exactly but no that's going on as well but like i say college wasn't really that involved in it the problem when you're going to hands-off approach to government if anything does happen under you you can't really take any credit but then how much blame can you take so it's true so there you go like i say tricky one to judge five something decided i'm doing it as well um he certainly didn't seem to harm the country but he didn't seem to actively try and make it better he did not help citizens in his country but that's why he had a lot of support from people and i'm trying not to let my personal biases cloud too much on that yeah middle of the road I'm going for five I wonder how Americans feel now like are they more sort of we want more

input from the federal but this is uh what's interesting is uh when people talk about the Democrats changing over time and the Republicans changing over time. How did Lincoln's party get to Reagan's party? Well, this is now far more recognizably the modern Republican Party than Lincoln's Republican Party. Yeah, yeah. We're there, and we're only 60 years on from the formation of the party. Wow, yeah. So, yeah, we're starting to see the modern Republicans here.

Interesting. And, obviously, there's a lot of support for modern Republicans and their way of doing politics. It is a popular view. Small government, low taxes. So, yeah, I'm sticking with my five. I'm happy with my five. Yeah, me too.

Ten. Disgrace games. I don't know, Jamie. Yeah. I mean, you get snippets that make me think, oh, you get the feeling you'd be an awful person to be around. You get some snippets that he was a horrible father, a really awful

husband. But then, it's only tiny snippets and it's like, maybe I'm reading too much into these little snippets. Maybe Grace didn't want to be involved in the politics. Maybe. Maybe. He bored her, so that's why she wasn't involved. Maybe the strictness

with his sons was just Victorian upbringing. Kind of, that's how fathers were back then. And you get all these stories of him being a practical joker, and you do see some of the humour start to come through, more so in some of his comments in this episode than the last episode.

I'm with the bear. Yeah, exactly. Him laughing at the bear rampaging around MGM Studios. That's brilliant. Savaging a poor dog. But equally, it's like, it's not... I get the feeling that he was just a bit of an empty shell of a man. Barton came along and just filled him with this fake personality. And that was done so strongly that it's still been retained today.

Is that why people, some one or two comments have been that I'm like, I'd be like Coolidge if I was a president. Oh yes, I'd forgotten about it. Going back. Dead inside. Is that why? I think it's because you're dead inside, Jamie.

And I think that comes across. Okay. Yeah. No, I'm guessing, and I might be wrong here. People have to get in contact. I'm guessing it's more the, if you were president, you'd do a bit of work in the morning, go for a nap, have a go on your vibrating machine,

and just hope that everyone else is getting the job done. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's the way to do it. It's a bit like when we set up this podcast and you decided the roles, and you decided that I'd do all the research. Yeah. Delegation.

And all the editing. Yeah, yeah. And the artwork. Yeah, delegation. And you did it very'd do all the research. Yeah. Delegation. And all the editing. Yeah, yeah. And the artwork. Yeah. Delegation. And you did it very well. Thank you.

Yeah, you did. That's good. And you're dead inside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anywho, do we count that? I don't know if it's laziness, though.

Do we count that against him? Is that disgraceful? I think I can summon up a point for the fact that he clearly did not work very hard as president yeah um but i don't think i can go much more than just a point for that because it's not like the country fell apart because he didn't work very hard it's not because he was being lazy that was his genuine political philosophy of how it should be done what about the the flooding though because? Because that sounds like, you know, it's a worse thing than Katrina. You're absolutely right.

How did I forget that? Yeah, you could almost argue that it was his Katrina. Yeah, no, that's a very good point, because then it actually started to really impact on people who needed actual help. But maybe that should be in statesmanship, though. That's not his personal. But it's his personal belief in government, isn't it?

It overlaps you know i'm going to throw another point into this round for that take you knocking off two yeah i am i'm gonna match you because again i'm a bit i'm not quite sure what to do you know i'm already hearing the typing of people on twitter and facebook criticizing our scoring for college i feel lost at sea i don't feel like I've got a firm idea on him at all. Right, Silver Screen. Silver Screen. Well, he was born

on a farm. His mother died and his sister died in quick succession, remember? Orbe said. He was painfully shy around people. He went to school, he studied, he finished, he became a lawyer. He met Grace and then he climbed the greasy pole. Yeah, he studied, he finished, he became a lawyer. He met Grace, and then he climbed the greasy pole. Yeah, he did.

Steadily, mechanically, just up that greasy pole. Zing, chunk, zing, zing, chunk, zing, zing, chunk. Yeah. All the way up to the governor of Massachusetts. You got the Boston police strike. You could make some drama out of that, I imagine, although his role in it was, I don't know, whilst people raged around him.

He was the unexpected vice president. He didn't want the job, but he got given it. And then Harding dies. He becomes the president. And then, I don't know, you tell me. We've literally just done the episode. You've got three things to say exciting that happened during his presidency and you've got five seconds to think of it five four katrina three two one and the games the games

in the tranks in the in the white house right so okay you could do an entire episode of him ringing his bell at the start and then he hides behind a curtain and the entire episode is just an empty office with the occasional staffer walking through looking worried that could be one episode and the tension the tension as well you could do the staff yeah you also mentioned uh nicaragua yeah no you could do something around the whole banana wars thing um but i think that's more that's not as cool as serious i don't think you know i don't think you can do that in an episode like in this episode i had to focus on one small aspect of it as an example rather than covering it properly and you mentioned katrina that happens during the second bush's presidency so um probably can't really be part of this i thought i said flooding

if you did and i've misheard you, I will edit that out. But I'm fairly sure you said country. The flooding, you could probably do the flooding. Yeah. Then he resigns. Oh, no, sorry. Missed, obviously. His son dies of a tennis blister. You could genuinely get some good stuff

out of that. Then he resigns. Then he's chased by a bear whilst laughing. I mean, you'd end on a high. Yeah, that's true. I mean, maybe try and make the second half of the entire series just his visit to the MGM studios, perhaps.

Could turn it into a kind of alien scenario where the bear's hunting them down one by one. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. We don't know where it is. We don't know where it is, don't know where it is. No. Just the cackling laughter of a man who's never broken a smile before. Oh, and they walk into a room that's full of, like, fur coats.

And then suddenly an eye just opens behind one of them. See a toothy grin. You're right, this series needs to be made. Ten. Ten out of ten. What was the bear called? Bruno. Bruno.

I was proud of finding that fact. That was an obscure book. I found the actual name of the bear in. Yeah. Yeah. Bruno and Coolidge. Coolidge. It's not great, is it? No, I struggle. the actual name of the Baron. Yeah. Yeah. Bruno and Corridge. Corridge. Oh.

It's not great, is it? No, I'd struggle. I think the audience would be as confused as we are now. I mean, you'd have to make a very firm decision on what Corridge's character is first and really roll with it. Yeah. Soulless.

I would go with very shy. I'd play it that way. I think you can get more out of it, more depth. I'm going two. I really don't think it's... Oh, I was thinking two or three. I don't it that way. I think you can get more out of it, more depth. I'm going two. I really don't think it's... I don't think it's very filmic. Two as well. Yeah, I'll go with two.

I don't want to pressure you if you want to go something else. No, no, no. No, no, you go for two. Go for two, okay. No. Four. Conversability. Ooh, ooh.

Ooh, he looks a man of the 20s, doesn't he? Wow. He does look like a man from the 20s. He looks a bit wrinkly, but in a weird way. Because he looks very slim. Yeah, very slim. Slim, chic sort of thing. He's got his very combed, reddish hair.

He's got a velvet jacket as well. He looks utterly miserable. He really does. He looks like he's got some really bad news on that bit of paper, doesn't he? He really does. He's just staring into the abyss. maybe someone's asked him to do something his uh what the thunder thunderbolt thunderbolt's broke down so it's been taken away for repairs for the afternoon that's his face can you see now why people were so amused when the story broke of

thunderbolt because he is the president all very serious and the idea of him going up to his room and just bucking around on his electronical hobby horse. Yeah, many jokes were made about it, apparently. Oh, of course. Including one that I quite liked, although paraphrasing this off the top of my head, but someone said that his hobby horse was like his foreign policy because it had neither head nor tail,

which I thought was quite amusing. Because if you see an image of one of these hobby horses it literally is just a barrel with a handle on it. It in no way looks like a horse. Brilliant. Yeah. Anyway, back to the picture. He's sat down, pinstripe trousers, he's on a chair, he looks miserable, he looks like a man from the 20s.

He does, yeah. It's not great. I'm not. It's not great. I'm not impressed at all by that. No. I'm going with a 3. I'm going... And he wasn't to go higher than a 3. No, I'll join you. So 1.5.

1.5 for canvas ability. BOLUS! Terms, 1. He served one full term and a bit of another one. Assassination, zero. He was not killed. No one tried to kill him. Election, landslide, 71.9%.

And when you consider that was a three-party election, that is astoundingly good. How many points is that? That is two points for election. So, there you go. Oh, I should probably mention, we got the score for Harding wrong last time. Damn it. Yeah.

I can't remember off the top of my head what it was. I think he got two more points than whatever we said he got. Okay, well, I've added this up right because it's quite easy to do. Go on then, what's he got this time? 14.5. 14.5, well, he beat Harding. He'd be pleased about that. Wasn't so scandally. Yeah, 14.5. Well, he beat Harding. He'd be pleased about that. Wasn't so scandally.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But is he an American? American or American? Father of the modern Republican Party, you could argue, or you could argue that's Harding. He took it to the extreme, though, didn't he? Yeah, him and Mellon. Reagan loved them.

We'll find that out when we get to Reagan. He was a big Coolidge fan, was Reagan. I mean, it's obviously no, but... It is a no. I don't know why we're hesitating so long, to be honest. It's a very obvious no. There's no spark. There's some weird anecdotes that I'm just not in any way

convinced are true. Apart from the bear one, that's brilliant. Oh, the bear one, yeah. The bear one's good. But yeah, sorry, Coolidge. Not good enough. But there you bear one, that's brilliant. Oh, the bear one, yeah. The bear one's good. But yeah, sorry, Corlidge. Not good enough. But there you go. That's Corlidge. Got Hoover next. Herbert. Herbert Hoover. Right, okay.

So that's this week. It's not a great score. It's no American. But we got a rampaging bear, so it's not all losses. And a booking electronic horse. I mean, what more can you ask for? Exactly. That's why I started this podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for downloading some Pop Bean and iTunes. And... And let's actually read a review, because we forgot last time. First time ever in this podcast. Yeah. Let's start out with some British reviews, and then we'll pop across the pond, shall we?

Yeah. Let's see if there's a difference in tone. What the hell are these British guys doing? Please cease. I've contacted my lawyer. This review is our most recent one, in Britain, anyway. It is by Ur. And the title of the review is our most recent one, in Britain anyway. It is by Err. And the title of the review is Jerry.

And the review simply says, O'Harding. So that's good. Thank you very much. Perhaps a more detailed one here. This is a review by Annabelle. Hi, I'm Annabelle. I'm 17 and I'm absolutely loving your podcast. Before listening to these podcasts, I was pretty ignorant when it came to the American presidential system, but now I don't feel like a complete amateur whilst talking about them. I'm currently listening to Vampyr in part two,

and I've basically become the biggest Calhoun fan ever. I'm debating whether it would be too sad to go as him to a Halloween party. I think maybe. Anyway, just want to say I love your podcast. I've decided to write my EPQ on the effects of colonialism on Native Americans, primarily the effects of alcohol. Thanks and big up Calhoun. Aww.

Excellent. That's amazing. Good luck with your writing and definitely go to a Halloween party as Calhoun. Do it. But please, please, please, animal, do not buy rabbits. Yeah, no, stay away from the rabbits. But, yeah, do it. One more British one. Tor Roach. I'm very new to

the American presidents, being from England and all. This podcast has been absolutely fantastic. An intro on the leaders of the United States of America. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I would definitely recommend, and if you like, please check out their other podcast, Totalus Rancium, Roman Emperors.

P.S. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Roman Emperors, Totalus Rancium, Roman Emperors. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Roman Emperors, Totalus Rancium. To be fair, he didn't say Roman Emperors. I've inserted that for clarity and I said it in the wrong way. That was my error. I'm so sorry. Yeah. But there's a PS here.

Where is Roger? He's Roman. He's probably sitting in Turkey. I hate to say, Roger died in 1604. So that's why he never appears in this series. Oh, I did it with his last parcel. Yeah. Oh, not 1604.

What am I talking about? 17, 1720. Yeah, I'm going to say 1720. Yes. There's a reason for that. A very obscure reason that won't become clear for possibly three years okay let's go let's go to america shall we the states land of the free here we go i'm going i'm going it's like i i know some podcasters have like really fancy things where they can see all their reviews come up in one place i i don't know how to do that. I've never thought to set it up.

I just go into iTunes and pretend I'm living in America and then look up reviews. Okay. Let's go for this one. This is by Me Do. An American classic by two Brits. Five stars. I started listening in a fit of boredom

and a week later I'm still binging every chance I get as an american fan of political history here in the united states i was genuinely surprised by the depth and love of the subject by our former brothers from a queen mother they apply a great understanding with fresh perspective the comic approach is done as well as any this podcast deserves the respect of so many others and should definitely be added to your listening pleasures. Well done, sirs. I, as a United States citizen, officially forgive

you for all those taxes and such from earlier years. Cheers, we've got formal forgiveness now. Job done. We can stop the podcast. That's what we were waiting for. I'm going to choose that there's been a typo here uh this is five stars guy who ties it like it is it just starts with jamie are excellent which obviously there's been a typo there i'm going to choose that it was meant to be rob and jamie are excellent and the typo is not

jamie is excellent full stop no that's what was. We all know that's what it was. This pod has a very simple premise, and they do an excellent job of making history fun. Never thought John Tyler and James Polk could be so interesting. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I'm glad I could provide that for you. Chris Gals, five stars, informative and hilarious. I specifically searched for a podcast that would systematically go through each of the United States presidents

and tell me about them. Well, here and look. That's what we do. Hey, that's good. This is the only one I could find. And it's perfect. I was surprised when I started to hear two British guys discussing US presidents.

But I find this to be a big draw for the podcast. It provides a very cool perspective. I finally feel informed about what these men actually did and who they were without whitewashing it or making it unbearably dull. The rapport between Rob and Jamie makes this podcast so fun and hilarious, I found myself shaking with laughter

trying not to wake up the baby. Nice. They also do a nice job of dealing with the uncomfortable and horrible racism that is prevalent in our history. Their willingness to discuss it and assumptions that we all agree that these acts and viewpoints are repugnant makes this history much

easier to stomach. I highly recommend this podcast. Can't wait for the rest of the presidents. Thank you very much to Chris. There we go. Tell you what though what though saying surprised that two british people could do a podcast american presidents you never know there might be a twist at the end you were actually born in kentucky i'm chad okay i'm gonna go for one more uh this one's from a few months ago back back when the pandemic was hitting. Come for the history, stay for the jokes by Sarah.

Five stars. Being a huge history podcast nerd, I've listened to quite a few great ones. Nothing could have prepared me for the hilarity of listening to these two guys. Ah, cheers. I was late to the game, so I'm still playing catch-up, but this is my go-to right now. I just had tears in my eyes from laughing

at, of all things, the second of Tyler's episodes. Oh, that's Tyler's massive gun. Oh, yeah, massive gun. Wow, what a big gun. What a present. What a man. Thanks for informing and entertaining so well.

No problem. So there we go some nice nice stroke in the old ego there for us too but if you want to send more we'll read so i don't do it very often it's just me reading things i just find it finally very weird it's nice though but it is it is nice it is nice that people are listening yeah oh someone else says they're definitely going to listen to all of the emperors next, but they've put a bunch of Zeds next to it, which I don't know whether that's implying that they find emperors boring,

but they're going to give it a go anyway. Oh, well. Fair enough. Give it a go. You might like it. Yeah, never mind. Yeah, check out the Roman one if you've not. It's a bit sillier than this one.

Yeah. It's a bit more rough around the edges at the start as well, because that was back in 2016. Right, anyway, we're just waffling now at the end. We shouldier than this one. Yeah. It's a bit more rough around the edges at the start as well, because that was back in 2016. Right, anyway, we're just waffling now at the end. We should probably stop this episode so I can go and start researching Hoover. Yeah. Okay, so thank you very much for listening,

and until next time, goodbye. Goodbye. Hello? Mr Preston, sir? I'm napping, I'm napping. Are you sure? You sounded... Yes, yes, I'm napping. Go away. Goodbye later. You sounded in pain, sir. Are you sure? Go away. Napping. OK. If you need help, let me know.

It's okay, Thunderbolt. We're alone again. Tell me more about the bank loan to Germany. Well done, Basil. That's the only thing I remember from my history. I cut it. Yeah, it's like the word count was starting to get a bit too long and I had to cut something.

And it's like, do we really need to know about the intricacies of... It's important, yeah. It leads into World War II. Yeah, it's important. But it's like American focus, most of them didn't care about what was going on in europe so yeah no that's literally um about an hour ago when i sat down to finish up the notes it's like this isn't all fitting in it's like yeah what can i leave out you know what all the stuff with doors

going over to europe don't necessarily need that so yeah sorry jamie it hit the the cutting room floor but if you already know about it... The one thing I could talk about... You can have your own segment. I hope you're prepared. Yeah. Can I do a jingle? Hang on. Okay, do a jingle.

Hang on. What is that? Is that your jingle pouch? My jingle pouch. For the listener's benefit, Jamie has stood up and then produced a sort of little pouchy bag. Oh, is that a hurdy-gurdy? No, it's a kalimba. Oh, right. Okay.

Or a finger piano, some people call it. Nice. This is a new addition to the podcast. Where's the keyboard gone that our Roman Emperor listeners love so much? Oh, that got beer spilt on it. It no longer works. Oh, there'll be so many sad listeners. Before I bought this, I tried to re-buy it, but they'd sold out on Amazon, so I couldn't buy it anymore. Oh, so sad.

Okay, right. Here we go. I'm waiting. How's that? I was waiting for some vocals. OK. America. Can we guess it?

Can we guess it? Can we guess it? British.