The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Coolidge speaks, politicians listen

November 22nd, 2008

Endowment Fund Business Listings ONLINE Reservations Classifieds Subscriptions

Coolidge speaks, politicians listen

Career includes run for Senate, consulting with President Klaus

By Benjamin Thomas Cunningham
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 14th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

Coolidge believes good business and political etiquette starts with strong morals. Her company, Coolidge Consulting Services, teaches basic principles such as kindness and equality.

COURTESY PHOTO

Czech-American businesswoman Eliška Haškova Coolidge chronicles her White House work in her Czech-language book Five American Presidents, My Czech Grandmother and I.

COURTESY PHOTO

Eliška Hašková Coolidge

Born March 26, 1941, in Prague
Flees Czechoslovakia in 1949
Graduates from Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) in 1963Works in the White House and related government jobs 196390
Returns to the Czech Republic in 1998, starts Coolidge Consulting Services
Named "Leading Czech woman of the world" by the Czech Senate in 2003
Publishes her book Five American Presidents, My Czech Grandmother and I in 2005
Runs for Czech Senate in 2006

Here is Eliška Hašková Coolidge in a group picture with Richard Nixon.

Here’s Coolidge with U.S. First Lady Laura Bush. In other pictures, she shakes hands with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and talks to former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz. Former U.S. Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr. have written letters of thanks and congratulation.

It’s all part of Coolidge’s autobiography Pět amerických prezidentů, česká babička a já (Five American Presidents, My Czech Grandmother and I), written in Czech and published in 2005. Coolidge, 67, fled Czechoslovakia with her parents in 1949. Her career as an assistant to U.S. presidents spanned 18 years, followed by another nine years with the U.S. State Department as special assistant secretary of state and congressional liaison to Latin America as well as an alternate delegate to the Organization of American States.

While the company Coolidge has kept — some of the most well-known politicians of the past half-century — is certainly a big part of who she is, Coolidge credits much of her success to her grandmother.

Her grandmother taught her about character (her grandfather was killed by the Nazis in 1942 for refusing to cooperate when they came to take over the historic Melantrich publishing house, of which he was a major shareholder). Her grandmother also taught her about morals.

“It’s how to say ‘no’ to something you know is not right,” Coolidge says. “It begins at age 2 when a child learns the difference between right and wrong.”

Coolidge has used her training and background to gain the ear of politicians at the highest levels of Czech society in recent years, including President Václav Klaus and his wife, Livia, both of whom she admires greatly. Her company Coolidge Consulting Services promotes social and business contacts between the Czech Republic and the United States and offers guidance in a variety of areas, from protocol and etiquette to tourism.

Coolidge has taught etiquette at the Czech Diplomatic Academy, at various government ministries and to corporate managers.

Those contacts with politicians led to her run for the Czech Senate in 2006 as a nominee of the Civic Democratic Party from her home region of Šumava.

Senate Chairman Přemysl Sobotka and Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra are among Coolidge’s vast network of friends and colleagues. She also holds image classes for children, where they learn good manners and are schooled in basic morals.

“She is bringing her experience from the United States, and she is able to hand this experience down to us,” Sobotka says in an e-mail. “It’s up to us how we are going to make use of her rich professional and life experience.”

Vondra says he first met Coolidge in Washington, D.C., and has taken advantage of her advice.

“Her professional comments on practical aspects of a politician’s life, such as image-making, dress code and public appearance, have proved extremely valuable for many Czech politicians.”

But Coolidge says the skills she teaches are about more than just etiquette, or even image-making. Instead, she feels she gives people the skills they need to have confidence to work on everything they might aspire to in their careers. As a specific example, she says it’s not about knowing which fork to use, but about looking in the mirror and deciding, “Who do I want to be today?”

It’s clear that Coolidge wants to have a behind-the-scenes role in shaping the images of those in the highest corridors of power. It’s also clear, as Coolidge talks passionately about the politics of the United States and the Czech Republic, that her ambition far exceeds image-making.

When Coolidge ran for the Senate in 2006, she won in the first round, but lost in a run-off in which voters for two other parties banded together. She still has strong ideas about how political systems should work — suggesting, for example, that the Czech Republic should switch to a U.S.-style, two-party system rather than its current parliamentary coalition government style to clean up the potential for corruption.

“Czechs have their own functioning democracy. Every country is different. But without a majority system it’s very difficult for corruption to end,” Coolidge says.

Coolidge also has strong ideas about business ethics, both in the Czech Republic and in the United States. She says accounting scandals of big U.S. corporations like WorldCom and Enron may have been addressed by Congress, but if students don’t learn correct social skills, nothing will change.

“Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron in the United States was meant to stop corruption forever,” Coolidge says. “[But] it’s so important to create a society where kindness, not fraud and dishonesty, are the rule.”

That also follows in the Czech Republic, where Coolidge shudders at the nouveau riche attitude of those who made fortunes quickly, and often by questionable means, after the fall of communism.

“Money is wonderful to have. We all love it, but without morals, it’s no good for our society,” Coolidge says. “New money is the biggest enemy of ethics and etiquette. It assumes an arrogance based on the belief that anything can be bought, including taste.”

In modest fashion, Coolidge says her own political career in the United States started “by accident” and a little bit of luck. After graduating from Georgetown University, Coolidge wanted to join the State Department as a foreign service officer.

Rules at the time required applicants to be citizens of the United States for 10 years, however, and she had only been a citizen for seven, Coolidge says.

But a State Department official was so impressed with Coolidge’s abilities when she went to interview that he sent her over to the White House, where she was immediately hired. Coolidge held a variety of public relations roles in the White House and founded the Office of Presidential Messages.

These days, her book has inspired so much admiration from Czechs that Roger Johnson, an American businessman living in Brno interested in sponsoring its translation into English. He says three of the most important people in his life, his Czech lawyer wife, his mother-in-law and his daughter have read the book and been inspired by it. The book made them “proud to be Czech and proud to be American,” he said.

“Her consulting business of government and dealing with etiquette and proper conduct shows that it’s so important to build this honesty and integrity for business or politics,” Johnson said. “It was lost during the communist period, and that’s a very big part of what she does.”

Benjamin Thomas Cunningham can be reached at bcunningham@praguepost.com

Be the first to add a comment!

Most e-mailed articles
The joys of heartbreak Standoff Sarkozy chides radar base

Related articles
The joys of heartbreak

Most visited in Business Listings

The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.