When President Coolidge "chose," he startled his secretary and his doorman. He startled Main Street, Rapid City, and Wall Street, Manhattan. It is not unthinkable that he even startled himself, but certainly he startled no one more than his political impresario, William Morgan Butler, Chairman of the National Republican Committee, who, just when the laconic lightning struck, was on a jotting jaunt in the Northwest, a tour of inspection to see what properties would be necessary for the Prosperities of 1928, starring Calvin Coolidge.
Lest President Coolidge's statement be made to seem a pet of political temperament, Impresario Butler closed his lips tight, pocketed his incompleted jottings, left the Northwest. But before going to Canada for a vacation, he did say that Calvin Coolidge was not to be thought of as definitely unavailable for the Prosperities of 1928. During Mr. Butler's vacation, President Coolidge repeatedly if silently insisted on his unavailability, finishing up last week with the almost crabbed words: "It is final." Mr. Butler, heading for Washington last week, obviously had a lot of new plans to make.
Mr. Butler was heading for Washington to confer informally with some members of the Republican National Committee, whom he had summoned privately by letter. The "Sic 'Em Boys" (Democrats, insurgent Republicans, and copy-starved political correspondents) anticipated his arrival by spreading reports that Mr. Butler was still planning a "Draft-Coolidge" movement. When the President characterized these reports as "unfriendly," the "Sic 'Em Boys" transferred the epithet to Mr. Butler and forecast a Coolidge-Butler spat. They also whispered that Mr. Butler was going to pick the G. O. P. convention city; that Mr. Butler was perturbed over insurgency in Wisconsin; that Mr. Butler was about to put Republican pre-convention doings on an official party basis. No one suggested that Mr. Butler was going to resign, but the New York Times called him "our most perplexed statesman" and others sketched the enormity of the task with which he, or his successor, was faced.
There is a limerick which small boys used to repeat at least once a year:
Ask your papa for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high
He hit the sky
And never came down till the Fourth of July.
The Republican National Chairman paraphrases this limerick at least once every four years, substituting "March" for "July" in the last line. The first line contains the first charge of his chairmanship. If the Republican elephant is to jump the fence, there must be moneys. So well is this known now by good Republicans that the financial duties of the National Treasurer have become almost automatic. All Mr. Butler has to do is indicate the amounts that seem necessary and his committeemen do the asking-papa part.
The short couplet, with its promise of a thrilling performance, is the difficult thing to fulfill. With President Coolidge unavailable, Mr. Butler and his committeemen had soon to determine—whether they began determining last week or not until the National Committee routine meeting in December—which one of several able and willing mahouts would be most likely to take the elephant skywards.