An Assault on the Rules of the Senate

At his swearing-in in the Senate chamber in March 1925, Dawes was called upon to deliver a brief inaugural address, a tradition that dated back to John Adams in 1789. What the audience heard, however, was far from traditional. As the Senate's new presiding officer, Dawes addressed himself to "methods of effective procedure," rather than any particular policies or programs. He then launched into an attack on the Senate rules, "which, in their present form, place power in the hands of individuals to an extent, at times, subversive of the fundamental principles of free representative government." The rules of the Senate, he declared, ran contrary to the principles of constitutional government, and under these rules "the rights of the Nation and of the American people have been overlooked."

Dawes focused his attack on filibusters, which at that time were being carried out most frequently by the small band of progressive Republicans, such as Robert La Follette, Sr., and George Norris, who held the balance of power in the Senate. Dawes declared that Rule 22, which required a two-thirds majority of those present and voting to shut off debate, "at times enables Senators to consume in oratory those last precious minutes of a session needed for momentous decisions," thus placing great power in the hands of a minority of senators. "Who would dare oppose changes in the rules necessary to insure that the business of the United States should always be conducted in the interests of the Nation and never be in danger of encountering a situation where one man or a minority of men might demand unreasonable concessions under threat of blocking the business of the Government?" he asked. Unless the rules were reformed, they would "lessen the effectiveness, prestige, and dignity of the United States Senate." He insisted that "reform in the present rules of the Senate is demanded not only by American public opinion, but I venture to say in the individual consciences of a majority of the Members of the Senate itself." He concluded by appealing to senators' consciences and patriotism in correcting these defects in their rules.

Since Dawes had not given advance copies of the speech to the press or anyone else, no one had anticipated his diatribe. In the audience, President Calvin Coolidge attempted indifference, but could not hide his discomfort. Dawes had managed to upstage the president's own inaugural address, which was to follow at ceremonies outside on the Capitol's east front. As the senators proceeded to the inaugural platform, they talked of nothing else but their anger over Dawes' effrontery, making Coolidge's address anticlimactic. After the ceremony, Dawes compounded the ill will when he joined the president to ride back to the White House, instead of returning to the chamber to adjourn the Senate. In the Senate chamber, there was considerable confusion. Senator James A. Reed of Missouri noted that the Senate did not adjourn, nor did it recess. "It simply broke up."

Most senators were less than receptive to Dawes' advice. "Dawes showed as little knowledge of the Senate's rules as he did good taste," snapped Democratic minority leader Joseph T. Robinson. "It was exactly what should not have been said," added Robinson's colleague from Arkansas, Thaddeus Caraway. "I regret that such occasion was perverted into a farce," complained Senator Claude Swanson of Virginia. "I have an opinion of the spectacle but do not care to express it," was George Norris' response, and Republican majority leader Charles Curtis declined to make any public comment on the vice president's remarks. But while the senators disapproved, columnist Mark Sullivan observed that the public was delighted. Sullivan described Dawes as a hero who had finally made a dent "in that fine old encrusted Senatorial tradition, buttressed by antique rules and practices, and solemnly defended by conservative and radical Senators alike."

An Irritated President

After upstaging the president on inaugural day, Dawes compounded his error by writing to inform Coolidge that he did not think the vice president should attend cabinet meetings. President Harding had invited Coolidge to cabinet meetings on a regular basis, but Dawes did not believe that Harding's action should necessarily set a precedent for future presidents. He took the initiative by declining even before Coolidge had offered him an invitation. "This was done to relieve him—if he shared my views—of any embarrassment, if he desired to carry them out," Dawes later explained, "notwithstanding the fact that he had accepted Harding's invitation." Dawes dismissed suggestions by the "busybodies and mischievemakers" in Washington, who imagined "unpleasant relations between Coolidge and myself." What Coolidge thought is less certain. In his Autobiography, Coolidge counted his experiences in the cabinet as being "of supreme value" to him when he became president and suggested that the vice president should be invited to sit with the cabinet, if he was "a man of discretion and character so that he can be relied upon to act as a subordinate in that position." The implication was that Dawes did not fit that description. In addition, Coolidge never mentioned Dawes by name in his memoirs.

Coolidge also felt irritated over an incident that occurred on March 10, only days after Dawes started presiding over the Senate. Up for debate was the president's nomination of Charles Warren to be attorney general. In the wake of Teapot Dome and other business-related scandals, Democrats and Progressive Republicans objected to the nomination because of Warren's close association with the "Sugar Trust." At midday, six speakers were scheduled to address Warren's nomination. Desiring to return to his room at the Willard Hotel for a nap, Dawes consulted the majority and minority leaders, who assured him that no vote would be taken that afternoon. After Dawes left the Senate, however, all but one of the scheduled speakers decided against making formal remarks, and a vote was taken. When it became apparent that the vote would be tied, Republican leaders hastily called Dawes at the Willard. The roused vice president jumped in a taxi and sped toward the Capitol. But enough time intervened to persuade the only Democratic senator who had voted for Warren to switch his vote against him. By the time Dawes arrived there was no longer a tie to break, and the nomination had failed by a single vote—the first such rejection in nearly sixty years. President Coolidge angrily held Dawes responsible for his most embarrassing legislative defeat, and the rest of Washington could not resist teasing the vice president over the incident. The Gridiron Club presented him with a four-foot high alarm clock. And Senator Norris read a parody of "Sheridan's Ride" on the Senate floor:

Hurrah, Hurrah for Dawes!
Hurrah! hurrah for this high-minded man!
And when his statue is placed on high,
Under the dome of the Capitol sky,

The great senatorial temple of fame—
There with the glorious General's name
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright,
Oh, Hell an' Maria, he has lost us the fight."

Stimulating a National Debate

Dawes bore the criticism surprisingly well. He was never a man to shy away from controversy, and he enjoyed being at the center of attention. He also enjoyed occupying the Vice President's Room behind the Senate chamber, which he found impressive, with its tall mahogany cabinet, Dolly Madison mirror, Rembrandt Peale portrait of Washington, and chandelier that once hung in the White House. When the Senate was not in session, large delegations of visitors would tour the corridor outside his office, and since the door was generally kept open for better ventilation they would always "stop and peek in." The senators, too, would stop and talk with the vice president who took such an active interest in their rules and proceedings. But Dawes found it curious that conversation always seemed to get around to whether "this or that Senator will be willing to concede the right-of-way to this or that piece of general legislation as a measure of surpassing public importance." He remained convinced that, by allowing unlimited debate, the Senate rules granted an intolerable power to the minority.

Rather than cease his criticism, Dawes continued to seek public forums to denounce the Senate filibuster. During the summer recess in 1925, he toured the country addressing public meetings on the subject. He pointed out that filibusters flourished during the short sessions of Congress, held between December and March following each congressional election, and that these protracted debates tied up critical appropriations bills until the majority would agree to fund some individual senator's pet project. He frequently cited a filibuster by Senator Benjamin Tillman that brought a $600,000 appropriation to South Carolina. Dawes praised the work of Senators Francis Warren, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Reed Smoot, chairman of Finance. "It is they and their like who perform most of the difficult, disagreeable and necessary work, speaking only when they have something to say and accomplish." By contrast to such "constructive" senators, he had no use for legislative showmen, radicals, and filibusterers.

Dawes' campaign stimulated a national debate on the Senate rules. A significant rebuttal to his assertions came from the political scientist Lindsay Rogers, who argued that filibusters served a useful purpose. Too much legislation was hammered out in committees that met in secret, where powerful corporate interests held sway, and where progressive reformers had little influence. Rogers pointed out that "the powers of delay given individual Senators force into pending bills some amendments that the Senate leaders would not accept were they free to act as they desired." He also pointed out that despite the filibuster, the Senate got a "creditable amount of business" done each session. Changing the rules would be inadvisable, since it would silence the minority and allow the majority to act unimpeded.

Although the Senate did not change its rules during his vice-presidency, Dawes noted with satisfaction that it invoked cloture more frequently than ever before. After 1917, when the cloture rule was first adopted, the Senate had voted to cut off debate on the Versailles Treaty in 1919 but failed to invoke cloture on tariff legislation in 1921 and 1922. During the Sixty-ninth Congress, which ran from 1925 to 1927, the Senate cast seven votes on cloture, and three times gained the two-thirds majority sufficient to cut off filbusters. Not until the Ninety-third Congress, from 1973 to 1975, after a rules change had reduced the majority needed to vote cloture from two-thirds to three-fifths of the members, did the Senate equal and surpass that number of successful cloture votes.

Farm Relief and Banking Reform

Dawes also personally intervened in other attempts to cut off debate, and his efforts led to the Senate's passage of bills that extended the Federal Reserve banks and would have provided farm relief. Agitation for farm relief became a pressing issue during the 1920s, when American farmers were shut out of the general prosperity of the era. After the First World War, farm prices had fallen and never recovered. Members of Congress from midwestern and plains states therefore formed the Farm Bloc, consisting of some twenty-five senators and one hundred representatives. Holding the balance of power in Congress, they promoted legislation to solve the problem of distributing surplus farm produce. Each year between 1924 and 1928, Senator Charles McNary of Oregon and Representative Gilbert Haugen of Iowa, both Republicans, sponsored the McNary-Haugen bill to permit the federal government to buy crop surpluses and sell them abroad while at the same time maintaining a high tariff on the importation of farm goods. The result would have raised prices in the United States.

Robert M. La Follette, Jr., who had succeeded his late father in the Senate, led a filibuster against the McFadden-Pepper bill to extend the charters of the Federal Reserve Banks. By holding up passage of the bank bill, La Follette sought to pressure the Senate to vote on the McNary-Haugen bill. The only way to break this logjam, as far as Dawes could see, was to form a coalition "between the conservatives favoring the bank bill and certain radicals favoring the farm bill." The vice president intervened, calling representatives of both groups to a meeting in his room. One of the participants, Pennsylvania Senator George Wharton Pepper, commented that "by sheer force of his personality, [Dawes] forced an agreement that both measures should be voted upon. This agreement was carried out. Both bills passed." Pepper gave Dawes the chief credit for enacting these bills, as did Senator James E. Watson, the Indiana Republican who would soon become majority leader. In the course of a speech on equalization fees, Watson noted, "This explanation of the equalization fee was prepared by the Vice President, who is a supporter of the McNary-Haugen bill." Although Watson deleted this indiscretion from the Congressional Record, alert reporters in the press gallery had already publicized the statement. Dawes' interest in this legislation did not further endear him to President Coolidge, who twice vetoed the McNary-Haugen bills that his vice president had helped the Senate pass. Coolidge complained that "the McNary-Haugen people have their headquarters in [Dawes'] chambers."

An Irksome Job for a Man of Action

As a man of action, Charles Dawes found the job of presiding over Senate debates "at times rather irksome." He felt more comfortable in executive and administrative positions with "specific objectives and well-defined authority and responsibilities." He preferred clear statements of fact to speeches that appealed to prejudice or emotion. As presiding officer, he enjoyed making decisions about rulings from the chair and took some pride in the fact that the Senate had never overturned one of his decisions, but he attributed much of his success to the Senate's young journal clerk, Charles Watkins. Watkins had studied the rules and compiled the Senate Precedents, making himself "the actual parliamentarian" of the Senate. "Senate precedents are almost always conflicting, and when Charley Watkins gives me a choice of precedents to follow, I sometimes make my own decision. But it is chiefly upon his advice that I act." A decade later, Watkins became the Senate's first official parliamentarian, a post he held until his retirement in 1964.

Dawes similarly bristled over the social requirements of the vice-presidency, and as one Washington hostess recorded, "his social tactics, no less than his insubordination to the Senate, brought down blame upon him in Washington." Although he frequently dined out and entertained generously, it was always on his own terms. He would arrive late, leave early, and smoke his pipe at the dinner table. Caro Dawes also disappointed Washington's social set. Lacking the stamina that Mrs. Thomas Marshall and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge had shown for attending a continuous procession of luncheons and receptions, Mrs. Dawes declined many invitations. She never seemed to enjoy "presiding over the Ladies of the Senate," and looked visibly relieved when her guests departed. Yet even her critics conceded that her "manner was sweet and gentle, her conversation cultured, and her dignity unimpeachable," providing a gentle counterpart to her "Hell 'n Maria" husband. The vice president's estrangement from the president further shaded his social standing. As one Senate wife later confided, "I have always had a feeling which many share, that a slightly different attitude on the part of the Coolidges might have done much to relieve the strain so far as the Dawes were concerned."

In 1927, President Coolidge stunned the nation with his announcement that he did not choose to run for reelection the following year. Although pundits debated whether Coolidge wanted to accept a draft, his announcement opened a spirited campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Dawes was frequently mentioned for the presidency, he announced that he was not a candidate and instead favored his longtime friend, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden. The nomination went instead to Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, whose supporters considered putting Dawes on their ticket as vice president. But President Coolidge let it be known that he would consider Dawes' nomination as a personal affront. Instead, the nod went to Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis of Kansas. For the third straight time, the Republican ticket swept the national election.

A Travesty Upon Good Government

As Dawes' term of office approached its end, a senator told him how much the members of the Senate thought of him, adding "but the Senate got very tired of you at the beginning of your service." Dawes replied, "I should hate to think that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am of the Senate at the end."

At about this time, Dawes attended the annual Gridiron Dinner. He and his successor, Charles Curtis, were ordered to stand while the "Dawes Decalogue, or the Letter of a Self-made Has-Been to His Successor" was read, listing several commandments drawn from "the depths of my experience":

Don't steal the first page on Inauguration Day, and you may be invited to sit in the Cabinet.

Don't be afraid to criticize the Senate. You know how much it needs it. The public likes it and the Senate thrives on it. . . .

Don't try to change the Senate Rules.

Don't buck the President if you want to stay more than four years.

Don't do your sleeping in the day time.

Ironically, Dawes spent his last days in the Senate watching another filibuster, napping on the couch in his office and responding when the quorum bells rang. When the Senate dispatched its sergeant at arms to "arrest" absent senators, Dawes considered listening to the profanity of the arrested senators as they were brought in "one of the few pleasant incidents of such proceedings." He noted with some dismay that the galleries were filled to watch the filibuster and grumbled that "a travesty upon good government in the Senate is regarded as an amusement rivaling a picture show." In his farewell speech to the Senate on March 4, 1929, Dawes reiterated his objections to the Senate rules, saying, "I take back nothing."

Dawes had resigned as chairman of the board of the Central Trust Company of Illinois when he was elected vice president. After his term in Washington, he returned as honorary chairman, when it merged to become the Central Republic Bank & Trust Co. He became chairman of a financial commission to the Dominican Republic, and chairman of a committee to finance the exposition "A Century of Progress, Chicago, 1933." In April 1929, President Hoover appointed Dawes U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, a post he held until 1932. He was scheduled to head the American delegation to the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, when President Hoover persuaded him to take charge of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which Congress had just created to assist corporations and banks in need of relief from the Great Depression. Dawes' national standing rose so high that some Republicans talked of dumping Vice President Curtis from the ticket in favor of Dawes as a "rip-snorting, hell-raising" candidate to boost Hoover's chances of reelection. Then in June 1932, Dawes abruptly resigned as chairman of the RFC. His own financial base, the Central Republic Bank of Chicago was near collapse and required a ninety million dollar loan from the RFC to keep it alive and to keep the entire Chicago banking structure from collapsing. Dawes had to resign to avoid a conflict of interest.

Dawes, whose early career was shaken by the panic of 1893, was now confronted by an even greater financial crisis, one that shook his natural self-confidence and ended whatever remaining political chances he might have had. Reporter Thomas L. Stokes met Dawes shortly after his resignation from the RFC and found him "a dejected, dispirited man." Dawes was distributing a typewritten statement to the press predicting business improvement. "That's all he had to say," wrote Stokes. "He was manifestly uneasy and nervous, not the hail fellow, the 'Hell and Maria' I had known about Washington for several years. I wondered at the time what was wrong." Several days later Stokes heard rumors about the shaky banking situation in Chicago and then about the RFC loan. Eventually the Central Republic Bank was placed in receivership and liquidated. Dawes reorganized it as the City National Bank & Trust Company of Chicago and paid back the RFC loans. He remained associated with the bank until he died at the age of eighty-five, on April 23, 1951.

Historians have concluded that if Dawes was not really a leader, he acted like one. As vice president, he would not accept direction from the president, and whenever his views did coincide with Coolidge's his lobbying on behalf of administration measures was more likely to hurt rather than help. Dawes' forthrightness and tactlessness incurred the anger of many senators. Although his "bull-like integrity" won Dawes recognition as an outstanding vice president, that quality antagonized the Coolidge Administration more than aiding it. As for Dawes, he believed that the vice-presidency "is largely what the man in it makes it." And for his part, he made the most of it.

Charles Gates Dawes