Dearest Rachel –
I had a dream, it was a mystery
iDeoLa (Mark Heard), “Is It Any Wonder?” from Tribal Opera (1987)
I dreamed of science and of history
There is a certain item of presidential lore that tells of letters written at some point in time between Election Day and Inauguration Day by the outgoing president to his successor, telling him of the challenges he will have to face, and how he ought to deal with them. Not all of the advice is necessarily political; living in the White House is, after all, a… unique… experience, and requires adjustment in its own way, so some of these letters may include information to that effect, as well. I say “may” because these letters are generally for one person’s eyes only; the succeeding president. After all, some of the secrets revealed in them may include information related to national security, and thus, to be kept from the general public. So, while we know of the existence of these letters, we will never be allowed to see them, or know what they say.
And, of course, not every incoming president receives one of these letters. I’ve heard rumors to the effect that #44 spitefully refused to write one for his successor, since he defeated his own hand-picked choice – whether that’s true or not, I couldn’t say. And, of course, there are those that ascend to the office suddenly and unexpectedly; there are no letters written posthumously to Vice President by their late superiors.
But last night, I dreamed that one such man was given a vision of the future; and not just his future, but that of the country for generations to come, compelling him to provide such letters of advice for all of his successors, even to the present day. Based on the year listed as the title of this letter, I suppose you might guess who that man was; Calvin Coolidge.
For a man named Calvin to be given a vision of the immutable future seems rather appropriate, considering how his namesake is forever linked with the doctrine of predestination. According to him, no one is able to change the future; whatever ‘choices’ an individual may think they are making, those choices were the ones they were always intended to make, for time immemorial. No amount of advice or warning would sway that person from making those decisions, because they had been decided since the creation of the world (by the Creator Himself) to make those specific decisions, whether good or bad.
You can probably tell I have a problem with that, honey. While I can understand an all-knowing God being aware of every one of our decisions from the moment of creation (and even before that), I have difficulty in accepting that He all but programmed us to make every last one of them, including our rebellious ones. Considering that I’ve always been taught to believe that God didn’t want us to rebel (and thus be separated from Him, both in this life and the next), this seems to run counter to all that; indeed, it suggests a thoroughly malevolent Deity who directs the majority of our steps away from Him, and I cannot abide that. The way I understand Him, He didn’t want us to be robotic servants, choosing to follow Him simply due to the fact that there are no other options; that was the whole point in offering the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place.
But I digress. This story was meant to be of Calvin the president, not Calvin the theologian.
A century and a month ago, he stood in the parlor of his family’s home in Vermont, where his father (a justice of the peace and a notary public) administered the oath of office to his son in the wee hours of the morning – the only time a President has been sworn in by a family member. But in my dream about his letters, he had already known about all of this several months previous, and was prepared – or at least, was making preparations. While he still had to clean up the mess left by his former boss and his cronies, there didn’t seem to be much he needed to do to keep the country prosperous and strong, and so the knowledge he had been given was of relatively little use. But perhaps, the knowledge of certain future events – such as his son’s imminent death (couldn’t he at least have insisted that the boy wear sock when he went out to play tennis, so he wouldn’t get the blister that would eventually become infected with sepsis?) and the eventual fall of the stock market (which may have prompted him from running to keep the office in 1928) – may have induced a certain measure of paralysis as to what to do about things he may have seen, even as the leader of what was becoming the greatest nation on earth, beyond his power or ability. With such knowledge hanging over his head, it should be no wonder that he was known for being silent and taciturn (although he already had such a reputation even as Vice President, but this would no doubt amplify this aspect of his personality).
And yet, he still decided to impart various aspect of the knowledge granted to him to those who were to come after him, addressing each of them by name in the various letters written by him, and turned over to the Secret Service to dole out in turn with every change in leadership. Some would be vague, and in the case of his immediate successor, somewhat apologetic, since, while he had taken care of most of the corruption in him administration, he had not seen to the affairs of America’s precarious, if from outward appearances prosperous, financial situation. He implored Hoover to remember his roots as the Great Engineer; “You made your name as a humanitarian to the peasants of Europe, Herbert. It may well be that Americans will need such compassion in the coming years in turn, rather than being left to their own devices.” His letter to Roosevelt, by contrast, would suggest that he not be so bull-headed as to insist on throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks; “…government should not spend money like a drunken sailor. Indeed, to give credit to the sailor, at least he spends his own money.” He also advised “Frank” that, while he should avoid too many foreign entanglements, especially given his domestic circumstance, there was one rising to power at the same time he was, across the Atlantic, who he ought to keep a careful watch on.
But there were others that had specific references that were somewhat eerie. “Dear Harry,” began his third letter, “I have been instructed to inform you that ‘the gadget’ will, in fact, work, and will effect the desired result. I have no idea what this is referring to; I expect that your staff will brief you on this. What I do understand is that its effects will be horrific, but among the few and terrible options thrust upon you at this moment, it would seem that this will prove to be the least bad.” It was this letter that established that the knowledge imparted by his letters was beyond even his own understanding, as he all but admitted to a lack of awareness of the code name for the product of the Manhattan Project. But even the fact that he addressed Truman by name began to attract the attention of the Secret Service, to whom the letters had been entrusted. It was one thing to know Herbert Hoover, or even Franklin Roosevelt, from his lifetime, but Harry Truman would never have come to mind to anyone in Coolidge’s time as a potential President.
It would only get stranger from there, as each letter continued in this vein going forward. “Dwight” was congratulated for his victories on the front lines as well as at the ballot box, while “Jack” was gently reminded that his position behooved him to behave as the nation’s moral compass. “I was a near-firsthand witness to what happens when he does not; how can a country trust a man who would even betray his own wife?” It was also suggested that Kennedy avoid Texas, as much as possible: “Let Lyndon take care of that region; he knows the territory – and its people – better than you do. They may love you down there, but it need take but one man to undo all that.” Considering that he announced his plans to send America to the Moon from Houston, it would seem that Coolidge’s warnings on that point were ignored (and, to be fair, since nothing happened then, apart from a thunderous ovation, he probably considered himself safe), as well as those regarding Jackie (although she was not mentioned by name in Coolidge’s letter).
As with Truman, Johnson also received a letter that he understandably didn’t get from his former boss; his contained a vaguely sarcastic note of congratulation, along with a warning that the job was guaranteed to be more than even the Texan bargained for, with Coolidge predicting that he would “do as I did,” presumably referring to the fact that he decided not to run for re-election a second time, despite being eligible to, even under the new term limit rules put in place during the Eisenhower administration. Nixon’s letter contained a similar tone, attempting to remind “Richard” that “all the power in the world is not worth losing your soul over.” Likewise, “Jerry” was admonished to “do the right thing, even if it costs you,” while Coolidge suggested that “Jimmy… be careful of who you allow to get close to you,” which could be interpreted multiple ways; this could have led to his micromanaging his administration, or it might refer to having permitted the Shah of Iran to come to the States for his cancer treatment, which proved disastrous from a foreign policy standpoint.
This was the problem with some of the letters; the ambiguity in them could have simply led to the historical situation that we recall in our own known timeline – one can only wonder what Coolidge was trying to ward off with his warnings that might have been worse. Then again, our timeline has several instances of things gone awry for them having been disregarded, so there’s that.
But of course, this was all a dream, concocted by my unconscious mind – although some of these outlines were my conscious mind attempting to fill in the blanks between letters; some were more memorable from my dream than others. Indeed, I don’t recall much from Reagan onward, aside perhaps for a line about how Obama was “the culmination of what our Green Mountain boys fought and died for…” (presumably in the Civil War), and that he should “strive to be worthy of their sacrifice.” I wish I could tell you who envelope number forty-seven is addressed to, but that still seems to be classified material. For all I know, the Secret Service may well have turned them all over to the SCP Foundation these days, for all I know (although I’d need to properly flesh it out in order to submit a proper entry to them about this anomaly). With that being said, I still think it’s the sort of story you would enjoy hearing about, and hope it’s amused you for the moment.
But for now, keep an eye on me (and who knows, maybe the president, too? Odds are, the current one never read his letter, or completely forgot about it shortly thereafter), and wish us all luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 