“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and will always solve the problem of the human race.

Apparently, this quotation may not have originated with Coolidge. Amity and David have some evidence to offer on this point, including a cite that predates the version usually attributed to Coolidge (which comes from  a 1930s pamphlet published by New York Life Insurance Co., where Coolidge was a director). They also take note of some other misattributions, including one to McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and another to an unnamed Arab verse.

As the 2012 election approaches, the stakes could not be higher. By most accounts, the Republicans hold that rare opportunity to un- seat an incumbent president. Whom they nominate will determine the outcome of the election and, if their nominee is elected, the success of the next four – or eight – years. While history can never precisely predict the future, it can – and should – be a guide.

The two most successful Republican presidents in the last century were Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan. There were striking similarities between these two men and their presidencies. Success for both was marked by significant reductions in income tax rates and domestic spending, strong economic growth in the private sector, re-election by huge margins, and the trust and affection of the American public.

Tucker, author of a great book on Coolidge, ends with some pointed advice for modern Republicans as they search for someone to lead the 2012 ticket:

Today, the country longs for a candidate of such character, vision, discipline, experience, common sense, civility and humor. If the GOP can nominate a candidate for 2012 in the Coolidge-Reagan mold, the party – and the country – will be well served.

Amity did a commentary item for Marketplace radio yesterday, suggesting Coolidge as a model for current policymakers. I’ve included an excerpt below.

Coincidentally, I did an interview for Marketplace on Friday, exploring the history of tax rates. My comments on Coolidge ended up on the  cutting room floor (to use an anachronistic metaphor), but I suspect Silent Cal readers might be interested in the subject anyway.

Anyway, here’s the excerpt from Amity’s commentary. Link to the audi and ful text is at the end:

As presidents go, Calvin Coolidge is an unlikely hero. Conservatives focus on him far less than they do on Ronald Reagan, and after all, Coolidge served a long time ago, from 1923 to 1929. Coolidge said “no” so often that he was trashed as lazy even by his own peers. Today, Coolidge is held in such low esteem by most Americans that if they remember anything, it is his nickname: Silent Cal.

But Coolidge did three things that stand out today, especially from our budgetary perspective. The first was to monitor federal spending — personally, with his own pencil, and intensely. As president, Coolidge met with his budget director every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Once cuts had been made, Coolidge made more. Coolidge monitored every penny spent down to the salt and pepper on the dinner table. The housekeeper at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Miss Riley, managed to cut her outlays from $11,667.10 one year, down to $9,116.39 the next. “Very fine improvement,” the president wrote in a note to her.

More at: Looking to President Coolidge for budgetary perspective

David Pietrusza

C-Span has posted more video from the October symposium sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. In today’s episode, David Pietrusza speaks on Coolidge’s political philosophy.

Lynn Parramore writes: “Amity Shlaes, ever the eager revisionist, has whipped up a widely parroted narrative that contains just enough truth to give it the ring of plausibility. It goes like this: Governor Scott Walker is a paragon of virtue who will soon be embraced by the American public, just like his union-crushing predecessors Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan.”

What I said was that responding firmly to public-sector union excesses was good for the popularity of both Reagan and Coolidge, and might also be for Walker. That’s because public-sector unions’ disruption of every day life is unpopular.  In Coolidge’s case the issue was the Boston police, who walked off the job in violation of contract, triggering riots in Boston. Coolidge’s response was to back up his police commissioner. The policemen were fired and Coolidge declared: “there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” This bold statement attracted notice across the country.

Lynn Parramore writes:  “It was not exactly popular enthusiasm that wafted Coolidge into the White House. Actually, there was a huge orchestrated effort to push Coolidge by powerful financial interests.”

Coolidge’s action against public sector unions did win support from the Grand Old Party’s donor base. And that support did help his nomination to the vice-presidential slot. However this was not unusual. In those days party big wigs in both parties played a large role in selecting candidates. Popular enthusiasm was there. Otherwise, Coolidge would not have trounced a gubernatorial opponent in Massachusetts within months of the strike. Even President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, congratulated Coolidge, as David Pietrusza notes, writing in a telegram: “I congratulate you upon your election as a victory for law and order. When that is the issue all Americans must stand together.”

Coolidge became president because Harding died in office. But he had a chance to test popular enthusiasm in the election of 1924. In this election Coolidge won an absolute majority, notwithstanding the fact that it was a three party election.

Coolidge’s position on the police union strike made sense to the nation. There was much popular enthusiasm in that period for stopping unions that disrupted life in cities, and much support for those who dared do it. Earlier in 1919 the reforming mayor of Seattle, Ole Hanson, confronted a general strike. Hanson was hardly a reactionary caricature.  The child of immigrants and self-styled progressive who had campaigned for the state legislature in earlier days on the eight-hour day for women and miners. Hanson’s response to the strikers was as vehement as Coolidge’s: “our attempted revolution in Seattle was brought about by alien agitators and criminal labor leaders who, drunk with power, believed they could start a flare here which would sweep over the country.” Hanson also blamed “the influx of antagonistic aliens.” Next to Hanson, Coolidge sounded moderate.

Lynn Parramore writes: “Coolidge’s real legacy was a huge upward shift of income during the ‘roaring twenties’ away from ordinary people to the rich and powerful, who got even richer and more powerful thanks to his regulatory and policy inactivity.”

This suggests that the 1920s were bad for workers. Union membership fell in the 1920s in part because real wages rose. Real average earnings for weekly skilled and semiskilled workers climbed to $32.60 a week in 1929 from $26.19 in 1921, the year Coolidge came to Washington.  After the initial recession of the early 1920s, unemployment was below five percent, a level we envy today. By the end of the 1920s, the wealthy may have been wealthier, but, thanks in good measure to Coolidge’s tax reform, they paid a greater share of the income tax than under Democrats.

It’s possible to hang some of the blame for the market crash of 1929 on President Coolidge, just as it is possible to hang some of the blame for the dotcom crash of the turn of the millennium on President Bill Clinton.  There are two areas where the economy was in trouble in that period: farms and banks were both fragile.

But it is hard to find evidence the 1920s were overall a bad decade. Lynn Parramore cites Murray Rothbard, a prominent member of the Austrian School of Economics.  In fact, Austrians are the only others to trash the decade to the extent that she does. Austrians view recessions and steep unemployment as necessary reallocations to be borne stoically. This is probably not the view of Lynn Parramore or the sponsors of New Deal 2.0.

McWhorter based his comparison on this comment from Obama:

In addition to making government more affordable, we’re also making it more effective and customer-friendly. We’re trying to run the government a little bit more like you run your businesses — with better technology and faster services. So in the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America.

According to McWhorter, this sounds a bit like Coolidge’s famous suggestion that “the chief business of the American people is business.” But as McWhorter explained, Coolidge didn’t seem quite so intent on coddling business leaders:

What’s interesting about that statement is that he [Obama] is implying that the government will change its ways to suit the preference of business, as opposed to, for example, a rather similar speech in intent that Calvin Coolidge made in 1925. And this is the one where he made the famous quote, ‘The chief business of the American people is business.’ And what’s interesting is the complete difference in tone. In his speech, Obama used the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ 66 times. Coolidge in his speech used ‘we’ and ‘us’ just 28 times.

Asked whether he was suggesting that Obama was  ”chummier” with business than Coolidge, McWhorter said yes.

So does this mean Obama was being chummier in his speech than Coolidge, one of the most famously pro-business presidents in U.S. history? “That is precisely what I’m saying,” McWhorter says. Presidents nowadays, he says, “cannot be as saliently pro-business as Coolidge was. Obama has to be more coded.”

I wrote a short piece for the Wall Street Journal today that might interest Coolidge fans. While it doesn’t mention Coolidge specifically, it focuses on one of his favorite issues: taxation.

Take a look — I suspect some of you will have thoughts.

Soaking the Rich: An American Tradition – WSJ.com.