Calvin Coolidge’s timeless values
Toolbox
By Jerry L. Wallace - Published: February 20, 2011
Presidents Day is a day set aside for the celebration and appreciation of our democracy and of our nation’s leaders. We are blessed in America by the leadership we have enjoyed. Indeed many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere are today in the throes of seeking a democracy and new leaders for themselves.
Vermont’s Calvin Coolidge, our 30th president, 1923-29, is one of our leaders to be honored. He was a most popular president, having successfully brought the country back to a peacetime basis — “normalcy,” as it was called — after World War I. This was what he was elected to do, and this was what he did. Moreover, his era of the Roaring ’20s was notable as a time of peace and unprecedented prosperity for most Americans, with unemployment averaging only 3.3 percent. As a nation, America boomed and came alive on his watch.
Among his primary accomplishments, President Coolidge reduced a huge national debt by almost 25 percent and lowered taxes significantly, eliminating them for most working Americans. In doing so, he reported his progress to the American people by making pioneering use of the new medium of radio.
Coolidge also downsized a bloated federal establishment, refocusing it on its basic and fundamental functions, and made it operate efficiently, effectively and economically. Under his watchful eye, the government’s budget was balanced each year, and there was a surplus left over. Coolidge knew, it was said, how to make each taxpayer’s dollar sweat.
When it came to the relationship between government and its citizens, the Coolidge administration minded its own business and left the American people unencumbered to do their own thing.
Coolidge’s high standing was challenged by a combina- tion of factors arising out of the turmoil and dashed hopes surrounding the Great Depression. In the heyday of the New Deal, and for many years thereafter, dominant liberal historians blamed Coolidge’s economic program for the “false prosperity,” as they called it, that contributed to the crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.
Moreover, his idea of limited government they mocked as an anachronism, and the exceptional era of progress over which he presided they denigrated and labeled a new Babylon. The conservative historian Thomas B. Silver described Coolidge’s downfall thusly: “Coolidge has been subjected to more ridicule perhaps than any other president in American history. His policies are regarded by most historians as beneath contempt.”
The assessment of Coolidge’s administration began to change for the better in January 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. One of his first acts was to order a portrait of President Coolidge hung in the Cabinet Room. This happening attracted much media attention. Reagan went on to praise Coolidge’s economic program as he himself began to implement elements of it, especially those pertaining to tax rates. So it was that historians slowly began to re-evaluate Coolidge.
In recent years, noted scholars have produced several fine biographies of Coolidge, each offering a fresh, positive portrait of the man and his era. There have also been three major symposia, sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, where scholars have examined the Coolidge legacy. Many historians today agree that while the Coolidge economic boom came to an end, as all booms do, it was the policies and actions of President Herbert Hoover and the Federal Reserve Board that turned an ordinary recession into a major depression and that the economic and political policies of Franklin Roosevelt dragged it out.
Coolidge enthusiasts strongly believe he warrants a much higher standing. They feel his timeless fundamental values which were successfully employed in the 1920s are relevant today. This re-examination will be forthcoming soon. Amity Shlaes, the noted historian and author of “The Forgotten Man,” is writing a biography of Coolidge, which is scheduled to appear this year. She will provide a comprehensive reappraisal of Coolidge, the man and statesman.
At last, the long-underrated Calvin Coolidge seems destined to receive his just due and proper appreciation in the historical community.
Jerry L. Wallace, a historian and writer from Oxford, Kan., is a member of the national advisory board of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation.
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