CHAUTAUQUA–In the White House foyer hang the five most recent presidential portraits.

The oldest of the five moves to another place in the executive mansion when a new portrait arrives.

It’s common for presidents to hang in the White House cabinet room a portrait of a president not among the most recent five.

They usually select a president they particularly admire. Accordingly, Ronald Reagan selected a philosophical soulmate: Calvin Coolidge.

Remember Coolidge if you ever need to know, for a trivia question, which president’s birth date is a federal holiday. Coolidge, the only president born in Vermont, entered this world on July 4.

You can also remember him for another trivia question: Which first names have been the most common among presidents? First place goes to the Jameses, who number six: Madison, Monroe, Polk, Buchanan, Garfield, and Carter. Second place goes to the Johns, who number five: Adams 2, Adams 5, Tyler, Coolidge, and Kennedy. Coolidge, you see, is John Calvin Coolidge.

Meanwhile, as of now, the unique first names are Thomas, Martin, Zachary, Millard, Abraham, Ulysses, Rutherford, Chester, Benjamin, Theodore, Woodrow, Warren, Herbert, Harry, Dwight, Lyndon, Richard, Gerald, Ronald, Barack, Donald, and Joseph. Plus Stephen unless you count Stephen Grover Cleveland as Cleveland 22 and Cleveland 24.

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A few historians are encyclopedias of the 1920s. One was the guest of Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC, on June 28.

She is Amity Shlaes, author of the aptly named book: Coolidge. Although her talk didn’t focus on Coolidge, this book obviously does. Every paragraph seems to be finely detailed, prepared as a talented artist would hand paint an entire set of fine china.

From this book, the reader learns that Coolidge holds a distinction. When he was on the ballot for president, the race featured a third-party candidate who received a significant number of popular votes. Nevertheless, Coolidge received not just a bare majority but a significant majority of the popular vote.

That was in 1924.

A century later, the American presidential election has a third-party candidate likely to get a significant number of popular votes. Absent significant shenanigans–whatever that may mean–it seems unlikely that anyone in 2024 will match Coolidge’s feat.

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Which brings us to the 2024 presidential election, particularly the aftermath of the June 27 televised debate between the leading contenders for the two major parties’ presidential nominations.

The hand wringing among some supporters of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.–including many in the establishment press–is nothing short of laughable.

You, faithful reader of this column, have seen here more than once that Biden’s condition is not–repeat, is not–laughable. That hasn’t changed.

What’s laughable now is how supporters of his are reacting to it. Even in the week or so before June 27, people who have known for years of Biden’s cognitive impairment were denouncing as “fake” the reports–and even the recordings–of it.

The credibility of the fakery allegations was zero before June 27. Since then, it has fallen to minus zero.

With tens of millions of Americans having simultaneously seen his cognitive impairment on June 27, Biden supporters have largely stopped singing the fakery song.

But some are instead saying he just had an “off night.” To which simple answer is: No.

It’s just not true. Saying otherwise insults others’ intelligence and doesn’t reflect candor. To understand this wasn’t just an off night, one needn’t have spent years as a caregiver for someone with cognitive impairment to whatever extent.

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Entirely apart from that, one can’t help wondering how Coolidge, nicknamed “Silent Cal” for good reason, would have fared as a presidential candidate now, especially in a televised debate.

The often repeated story about the 30th president is that someone once approached him and talked of having bet on being able to get him to say more than two words.

“You lose,” Coolidge said.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of all of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF