The Political Thought of Calvin Coolidge. Thomas J. Tacoma
political party. Congress was fragmented and lacked a single figure to be the leader the people could look to for guidance. Only if Congress were transformed into a parliamentary system with a visible prime minister could the Progressive understanding of leadership be realized there. Meanwhile, meaningful leadership fell to the president. Theodore Roosevelt provided the example the Progressives were seeking. Roosevelt explained in his Autobiography that he embraced an enlarged conception of the president’s constitutional powers, the “stewardship” model:
My view was that every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. . . . My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws.[62]
Consequently, Progressive theorists strove to expand the influence of the presidency.
Fifth, Progressives combined this new conception of political leadership with a confidence in the people to govern themselves more immediately and directly—direct democracy. They repeatedly proclaimed their faith in the people’s ability to govern themselves, as against the rule of party bosses and corrupted political institutions. State legislatures and the judiciary came in for special criticism for their willingness to “oppose” the will of the people through failing to pass reform measures or striking them down as unconstitutional. Progressives therefore lodged their hopes with the people, explaining that the masses were more fit for self-government precisely because they were free of the partisan interests and stale ideologies that had corrupted the elected branches. Some Progressives called for the total abolition of political parties on the basis that they were simply tools of big business. This was, for example, the approach called for by the Progressive Party Platform of 1912. Others, namely Woodrow Wilson, believed that the political parties could be reformed and improved better to reflect the people’s true will.[63]
In order to bring the people into a more direct relationship with their government, Progressives proposed and instituted a number of far-reaching political reforms. One of the most successful was the direct primary. Rather than leaving candidate-selection to party bosses, Progressives proposed allowing the people to choose their party’s candidate through a primary election held before the real election. This reduced the power of the official party structure—no more would bosses, party kingpins, and financial titans decide from their smoke-filled rooms whose names would appear on the ballot. Now the people would choose. Likewise, Progressives sought to empower the people to make and repeal laws directly through initiatives and the referendum. The initiative would allow the people to pass laws immediately, rather than await action by their elected officers in state legislatures. Referenda would allow the people to approve or to veto laws passed by their legislatures. These reforms would put the people in a position of authority over the laws. Other political novelties, such as the recall, gave the people continuous power over their elected representatives. If a state legislator or governor proved unfaithful to campaign promises or incapable of governing according to the true will of the people, they would be able to recall him from office through a special election. More controversial proposals suggested the same for judges, or for judicial decisions.[64]
Sixth, Progressives pushed especially for more technical and scientific expertise in government. They viewed this as the natural counterpart both to purifying the government of corrupt influences and to the reconceived understanding of leadership. The Progressive movement aimed to remove partisan appointees from government jobs—no more of the Jacksonian spoils system—and to replace them with specially trained, apolitical bureaucrats. Progressives therefore proposed and defended government by expert commissions and agencies.[65] In the Progressive understanding of history and social change, the turn to administrative expertise makes perfect sense. The method of discerning the direction of history was through careful interpretation of detailed factual information. Scientific, empirical reports about social trends and policy outcomes provided the best picture of the nation’s current conditions. The president needed administrators to research and report such information to him so that he could interpret it and explain to the people where they were in history, and how they could get to where they were going.[66] Confident that scientific training created politically neutral experts, the Progressives believed that the institution of a vast administrative bureaucracy served democracy.[67]
Passing the day-to-day matters of running the government off to experts stripped republican execution of the laws away from the people—seemingly an undemocratic move. But according to the Progressives, this bureaucratic structure did not undermine democracy by taking the operations of government away from the people. Their faith in experts allowed the political leaders to articulate the broad vision of policy goals; administrators and bureaucrats merely brought those policies into practical effect on the people’s behalf. This was a fully grown, mature democracy. This was the modern regime of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and the most advanced European states, especially Bismarck’s Germany, had already paved the way. The United States had only to imitate their administrative practices while applying them to republican circumstances.[68] According to the Progressives, this would maintain the United States in its position at the fore of history.
Principal Progressive Reforms
While Progressives did not accomplish all the reforms at which their 1912 Party Platform aimed, they were still successful in bringing about many of the reforms they desired. Though perhaps these may seem moderate to the post–New Deal and post–Great Society American public, the accomplishments of the Progressives appeared to Americans at the time as transformative.
At the level of popular and institutional change, the Progressives were fantastically successful in moving the American government away from the republican conception of the American founding toward a more democratic regime.[69] The expansion of popular rule through direct-democracy reforms was one of the Progressives’ most lasting achievements. Progressives had replaced the old-style party ballots with the secret ballot, which was an anti-party reform generally in place by 1900. Progressives also worked to undercut party dominance through the institution of direct primaries. By 1915, thirty-two states had adopted the primary as the method of choosing candidates for offices. Likewise, direct legislation by the people grew as a method of working around the perceived corruption and conservatism of state legislatures. Progressives proposed the initiative and referendum as methods of allowing the people a direct say on the laws. By 1914, eighteen different states had adopted initiative and referendum proposals. The recall of elected officials likewise enabled the people to force their elected leaders out of office before their terms expired. Some twelve states had adopted the recall by 1915. At the national level, Progressives successfully brought about the direct election of senators through the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment. This reform was but one more means of governing without the influence of state-level officials.[70]
The Progressives also successfully transformed the office of the presidency from its constitutionally limited scope into a focal point for all American political leadership. Theodore Roosevelt led the way, using his prestige as president in 1902 to force striking anthracite coal miners and the mine owners to come to a solution. Similarly, in the financial panic of 1907, Roosevelt stepped in to stop the spreading crisis on Wall Street (though ultimately it was J. P. Morgan’s money that stopped the bleeding).[71] President Taft followed TR’s lead in assuming new powers to the presidency, though with less political tact. Constitutional historians note that President Taft was actually the first president to draft legislation for Congress. Wilson, too, exercised the full scope of the presidency’s public prestige to push his legislative agenda through Congress. Other trends were also at work to empower the presidency and executive branch in general, particularly Congress’s actions in delegating more and more power to the president. The Tariff Act of 1890 allowed the president to impose tariffs (according to a tariff schedule) whenever he was satisfied that certain threshold conditions were met in international trade. The Supreme Court upheld this law in Field v. Clark (1892), ruling that the distinction between ascertainment of fact and genuine policy-making