And less the show window in polished. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for limelight. More, less window. No limelight. Midnight oil. So thats what coolidge said over hundred years ago when trying to explain the profession of government. The lines sound a little meager, a little modest, but is also something consoling, even elating the midnight oil. Hard is not only a refuge. It is feast for minds. Yours. Thats why tomorrow is the centennial of the coolidge presidency. We have prepared a kind of a verite feast of policy for our audience. Were going to learn about government from. President coolidge at the conference. Youll hear all about coolidges life from his boyhood in vermont to his final decision not to run again. Made at mt. Rushmore in 1927. Well also course discuss the coolidge project, the coolidge legacy, his relevance for politics today. Joining the Coolidge Foundation in laying this feast for you. And im not talking the breakfast. Im talking about the intellectual feast are a number of key parties. Id like to mention the major sponsors uphold. Your applause till the end, but im going to say ashbrook first, because it starts with a wave your arms. Ashbrook there they are from bradninch the line and harry bradley, mike and lindsay kaiser, dave and connie coolidge, john childs, betty and john allison. Beth and ravenel Curry University of south dakota. Phi delta, the national right to work group and many others. So. But there are other supports giving you this banquet. One party is the coolidge senators. Over 100 strong. Young today. Young people have come to washington to help study coolidge and reason together. You think of these senators as our youre also our coolidge senators. A second provider is the very library of congress. Our cohost this event. We cant begin to convey how grateful we are to you, to the library. One for digitizing coolidges papers, which has happened just now and for showcasing them in excellent show at this conference that youll see tonight. We are grateful to the librarian of congress and are grateful to coolidges friend meg mcaleer from youll hear in a minute. Another key entity present and helping and leading is the state of vermont, where we serve coolidge at Plymouth Notch, the president ial birthplace. Youll be hearing from us, pete balch of the state after meg reese said this conference about policy. The final key stake holder here is those who have come not because of coolidges celebrity, which is distinct, but because of policy, banquet and hope and. I hope we do walk away center with knowledge to welcome. Something i would consider a star of policy is someone who has his life to improving polls he and under midnight oil in so many areas budgeting cost of higher ed and character that is mitch daniels. And now i would like to welcome meg mcaleer of the library to this stage. Hi. Good morning. And an official welcome to the library of congress, the Worlds Largest library. We always have to have a tagline. My name is meg mcaleer and im an historical specialist here at the library. And one of the absolute honors of my position is having curatorial responsibility over the Calvin Coolidge president ial collection, which begs the question, the library, as you know has lots and lots of books. 51 million catalog books, to be precise. But did you know that the Library Collects and preserves a lot more than books . We have entire rooms for news papers, another one for photographs and printed graphic works for music and performing rare books and special movies, sound recorder outings, folklife veterans and maps and so much. So many of these collections are Available Online, so you dont actually to come to one of our reading rooms. We invite to explore them at lucy w. V. So in my part of the library, which is the Manuscript Division we collect and preserve unpublished primary sources such as letters, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, drawings, historical treatises, reports, creative fiction, poetry and so much more that document 400 years of United States history. So how many of. Okay, there are a lot of students here. How many of you have used primary sources in your studies. Some awesome. Your schools are doing right. So i hope youve discovered that sources have such strong and powerful first person narratives that allow us to enter into the experiences and mindsets of americans in the most intimate complex and nuanced. Our collections in the Manuscript Division, 12,000 of them produce a hundred and 60 degree perspective on the american experience. So many of our collections are the papers of people. Youre studying in school. You will recognize the names immediately, but we also have other collections. People whose names youre never going to encounter in textbooks, and theyre full of surprises. But among the names you do are the names of 23. You 90 states president s whose papers we have from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. Man of the hour, all of these collections, each them are digitized and Available Online and we invite you to come and explore them. And i should explain that few people know that we are the largest president ial library. And that is because we are older than the National Archives which wasnt formed until. 1934 five years after president coolidge left the white house. So whats fun about . Our president ial collections is that many them have very personal papers included with official records. As president. And they give us a really deep sense of the president s humanity. You will not surprised when i tell you that Calvin Coolidge did make himself the subject his collection. After all, this is the man who wrote in his biography that it is a great advantage to the president and a major of safety to the country for him to know that he is not a great man. So but but what president coolidge did to the library of congress and to you, the american people, are his White House Executive Office files that document the work and accomplishments of his through correspondence with cabinet secretaries, national and world civic and Business Leaders and the american. If not intensely biographical coolidge by intention. It does provide a really rich intimate biography of america in the 1920s, a decade of profound social change and intense debate not unlike our own. So americans i just want to point out have never been shy about telling their president s what to do. And this collection is an absolutely extraordinary compendium of their perspectives. So as custodians of the Calvin Coolidge president ial collection, we were delighted that the Calvin Coolidge president ial foundation agreed to hold their centennial celebration here at the library and we are delighted for another reason as well. Library. These are places to seek what you and to encounter perspectives that challenge you precisely. Theyre different than the ones you hold. Libraries are about sparking conversation and making connections about agreement and dissent about and civility. So for all these reasons we are pleased to welcome the Calvin Coolidge president ial and all of you for what promises to be a very stimulating and thought provoking symposium on nations 30th president Calvin Coolidge. So thank you and welcome. And i have the honor of inviting senator welch to the stage. Thank you, maam. I am really thrilled to be here. I live very close to Plymouth Notch and im going to brag about that for a minute. And i want all you to come up. But i am from vermont. Windsor county is where . Plymouth. Natchez. And if you just go route four through woodstock and to Bridgewater Corners and you take a left on route 100 day, familiar to all of you going out a few miles, you come upon this. Modest icon, like vermont farm and i remember the first time i was there, it was like 40 years ago. And i was not really aware of it. And i saw this modest little sign. It was the calvin and coolidge homestead. And it was such a thrill to be there. And i couldnt quite tell why. But as i was listening to meg talk and, also emily, what you were talking about with how policy matters. And its so wonderful to have young folks here who are the coolidge senators, i guess, policy matters, character matters, and the gravitational that we have in vermont to the memory of Calvin Coolidge is the character matters. I mean, you mentioned the midnight oil more less window and thats so tough was speaking to the young people now in an age that was invisible to coolidge and everyone else where everything is so intoxicating and with social media and immediate stimulation and hits and immediate and youre in a world that those of us who older did not have to contend with. Thats a challenge. Calvin coolidge didnt have to contend with it. But what he did was so grounded in Human Interaction and in the values of small communities, rural life. And so much, i believe we can learn from those values that were so embodied in Calvin Coolidge that hard work mattered. Loyalty to neighbors mattered, that doing things that benefited your local community mattered, that yes, policy mattered. He, a man of very strong, very conservative views. But what his conservative views included was not just he lived an honorable moral life, but that part of his sense of personal was to invest himself in building institutions. It could be the local community bank. It could be the local volunteer fire department. It could be, as it turned out for him, the presidency. That sense of personal responsibility extended beyond own his own responsibility to live an honorable life. But actually contribute to the creation institutions that would on those values. And thats a very humble, very modest understanding of his own limitations. But he could contribute so to the young who are here this is what an opportunity for you to be hearing from folks who have led this life focus on policy. But where policy is about Building Community and where Community Starts right. Your own neighborhood. So i want to express my gratitude to the Coolidge Foundation. I want to encourage all of you to come up and see this beautiful part of vermont. Bring your hiking shoes, bring your bathing suit in the summer. Bring your skis in the winter. But come on up. Thank you all very, very much. And now i would like to invite governor daniels to stage. Im here for a multiple multiplicity of reasons. Three, i can think of quickly. The first and foremost is because he told me to show. If i am. And he told me to i would watch Reality Television and or listen rap music. This assignment, of course, much more pleasant than either of those im here. Secondly, because my regard for this organization, which i have and and tried to help a little bit when i got the chance what a noble undertaking and so do those of you who have organized it those of you who have helped support it and fund it, and particularly to the young people who, have chosen to participate in it. Congratulations and many thanks. I dont know of a more important at this time in our national life. Pursuits, you could have devoted to. Although mindful and grateful to everyone present my thoughts. And i suppose the thrust of these brief remarks will be aimed at the young people who are here and who are the ultimate end of this wonderful undertaking that amity has conceived and touched off the. You know, countercultural almost always start with the with the young. And yet, as i was trying to think ahead today, i just kept coming back, back to the thought that there is no more countercultural figure in our history at this moment, which senator just very well described than Calvin Coolidge, who he was. He was very misunderstood. In fact, was misunderstood because he was misrepresented often by historians. Historians who wanted to discredit policies that he had championed, who thought the nation needed to pursue a more approach to its affairs. So his task, eternity was misread often as humorless ness and so forth. You know, weaned on a pickle, lines like that. His is commitment to policies of Economic Freedom was misread presented as some sort of soulless materialism. But the students here and everyone here will remember that this is the man who said that prosperity is an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped. He was always about bigger purposes and, more eternal things. Again, the senator precedes. So what we can learn from coolidge, i think what we can take from him are the of a potential countercultural moment in a nation which some of us think is in serious of a cultural course correction. His styles already been mentioned. I cant think of a style less in in sync with the zeitgeist of today. Does anybody think its sort of coincidental or ironic i his name alone so the most enduring slang term that i can think of that is transcended now multiple generations is cool. But how cool. You know when started is at least the way i remember the cool figures of days gone by. I meant calm, unruffled, unflappable, you know, cool under pressure, fonz or somebody. You know, Calvin Coolidge was cool before. Cool was, cool. But thats not the age we live in. Again, the senator talked about today are our most celebrated figures or theyre celebrated often for their arrogance and their this new word, their their perform. It is a characteristics, you know for now at least we live a look at me hot dog dance the end zone world how how very very different from Calvin Coolidge and his modesty his humility which i know is going to come up over and over during these days. Was it was more than simply personal virtue. He understood that humility is essential to wisdom. The person who knows that she or he doesnt know at all is more likely to learn and to gain and to grow and and and to expand. He knew humility was essential to the protection, freedom that those who to whom high offices. Need to understand, need to have absorbed throughout their lives that are not either entitled or capable of telling their fellow human beings how to live dictating the course of their lives and the decisions important to them. His fiscal policy, which is there and easily quantify but also was grounded in a virtue, in a in a sense of stewards ship that when one is entrusted as steward to the policy, to the resource. The funds of others, thats a solemn duty. Imagine just to take one example, how he would react, given this whole complex source of virtues and principles to the notion that we should cancel the debt of of people by the hundreds of billions of dollars who freely incurred those obligations in order to pursue what they hoped would a a useful and higher her education. He would be appalled at the ethical aspects of this that the unfair meanness of rewarding the people who dont need it at the expense or at least the eventual expense expense of those less fortunate. He would have, of course, been horrified. The unconstitutionality of an executive branch aggregating to itself the ability to spend hundreds of billions of dollars at the stroke of a pen when the. First article of the constitution makes that plants that responsibility firmly unambiguously in the legislative branch. He would have been deeply troubled by moral implications of incur charging a people to not those currently rewarded, but in the future to walk away from obligation as they had undertaken. However wise or unwise, those were. And of course would have been uncomprehending of a government which already run up unimaginable bills will be which were incurred, debts which were incurred not investment in the future of younger people, but for consumption in current day, one of the most selfish acts and is historic historically will be one of the least excusable actions of any government ever so i dont think its melodramatic to say. Certainly others say it more and more often that were approaching one of those moments that a free society is vulnerable to. That is to say some jeopardy to our free institutions, consent of the governed, our way of life. That should be neither surprising because history is full of failed experiment and to move away from and Decision Making by kings and despots and tyrants, warlords. But it should not be. It neither should it be completely, because this country been through such moments before and somehow found a way to come out, come out . Well, we could use a coolidge, at least in a modern form at least, maybe one who has to conform his taciturn style to the communication modes of the day. But. One who would once again help the nation a vocabulary of common purpose, of placing the future ahead of the present once children and grandchildren in theirs. Head of ones own interest a day. Again, this has happened before i just finished reading, probably the, i dont know, fifth biography of Ulysses Grant and in the run up to this meeting, i struck by so many parallels between. These two grant, like coolidge had been, was misrepresented by history for a very long time and underappreciated a very long time. Largely southern historians to build the notion of the of the lost cause. But he was once described as someone could be quote silent in multiple. Who does that sound like like he had, like coolidge a rarely displayed but very sly humor. Another sign of humility, another sign of someone who was not full of themselves that they think they can tell the rest of the world how to live once someone said to grant that the rather imperious new england senator, not that they all are. Edwins edwin sumner. They said he was told edwin sumner didnt believe in the bible. Grant said, well, he didnt write it. He was fiscally strict, put this nation back on the gold standard. The greenback era of the civil war. My favorite description and one that i thought was not a bad model, its for those who would pursue public responsibilities was said a grant could just as easily been said of coolidge. Shelby foote. There was no nonsense in him, no sentiment, just a plain business man of the republic. Now thats not a bad goal to shoot for. It seems to me and nobody embodied more than our 30th president. So. I would say to everybody of every here, but especially to the young people, it looks like the countrys got some troubles. Agree it does, but we should Never Surrender to the idea that we cant overcome those. Paul johnson wrote there are no inevitabilities in history and even though from its founding it was clear to those who created this nation of freedom that this was an iffy prospect. The language on the first coinage of the early republic said exit though and do boast it means the outcome is in doubt and it always will be in this fragile experiment of letting free people. People of individual dignity govern themselves and not submit to the dictates of despots, others. So one more thing about grant. Much like coolidge, nobody saw him coming. And yet when the nation these men most they were there. I theyll be there again to the senators in a room i suspect maybe one of them will you . Thanks for having me. Have a great conference