That likely works best with Mrs CMD (even when you do have something to say), but it doesn't cut the mustard here, Pal!
My favorite president was Calvin Coolidge. It was also the first time I voted.
As the US vice president, Coolidge and his vivacious wife Grace were invited to quite a few parties, where the legend of "Silent Cal" was born. It is from this time that most of the jokes and anecdotes involving Coolidge originate, such as Coolidge being "silent in five languages".[82] Although Coolidge was known to be a skilled and effective public speaker, in private he was a man of few words and was commonly referred to as "Silent Cal". An apocryphal story has it that a person seated next to him at a dinner, said to him, "I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." He replied, "You lose."[83] However, on April 22, 1923, Coolidge himself said that the "You lose" quotation never occurred. The story about it was related by Frank B. Noyes, President of the Associated Press, to their membership at their annual luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, when toasting and introducing Coolidge, who was the invited speaker. After the introduction and before his prepared remarks, Coolidge said to the membership, "Your President [referring to Noyes] has given you a perfect example of one of those rumors now current in Washington which is without any foundation."[84] Dorothy Parker, upon learning that Coolidge had died, reportedly remarked, "How can they tell?"[85] Coolidge often seemed uncomfortable among fashionable Washington society; when asked why he continued to attend so many of their dinner parties, he replied, "Got to eat somewhere."[86] Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a leading Republican wit, underscored Coolidge's silence and his dour personality: "When he wished he were elsewhere, he pursed his lips, folded his arms, and said nothing. He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle."[87]
As president, Coolidge's reputation as a quiet man continued. "The words of a President have an enormous weight," he would later write, "and ought not to be used indiscriminately."[88] Coolidge was aware of his stiff reputation; indeed, he cultivated it. "I think the American people want a solemn ... as a President," he once told Ethel Barrymore, "and I think I will go along with them."[89] Some historians suggest that Coolidge's image was created deliberately as a campaign tactic,[90] while others believe his withdrawn and quiet behavior to be natural, deepening after the death of his son in 1924.[91]
