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
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At the October 7 symposium on Coolidge — sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation and hosted by the John F. Kennedy presidential library — historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony offered his thoughts on Grace Coolidge. C-Span recorded his talk (as well as all the others delivered that day), but only now have they got around to showing it.
I’ll keep you posted on other videos from the event as they become available.
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As Americans prepare to go to the polls next week, we might consider Coolidge’s thoughts on voting. Here’s a selection from his November 3, 1924 radio address on the duties of citizenship:
We are always confronted with the question of whether we wish to be ruled by all the people or a part of the people, by the minority or the majority; whether we wish our elections to be dominated by those who have been misled, through the presentation of half truths, into the formation of hasty, illogical and unsound conclusions; or whether we wish those to determine the course of our Government who have through due deliberation and careful consideration of all the factors involved reached a sound and mature conclusion. We shall always have with us an element of discontent, an element inspired with more zeal than knowledge. They will always be active and energetic, and they seldom fail to vote on election day. But the people at large in this country are not represented by them. They are greatly in the minority. But their number is large enough to be a decisive factor in many elections, unless it is offset by the sober second thought of the people who have something at stake, whether it be earnings from in vestment or from employment, who are considering not only their own welfare, but the welfare of their children and of coming generations. Our institutions never contemplated that the conduct of this country, the direction of its affairs, the adoption of its policies, the maintenance of its principles, should be decided by a minority moved in part by self-interest and prejudice. They were framed on the theory that decisions would be made by the great body of voters inspired by patriotic motives. Faith in the people does not mean faith in a part of the people. It means faith in all the people. Our country is always safe when decisions are made by a majority of those who are entitled to vote. It is always in peril when decisions are made by a minority.
via Calvin Coolidge: Radio Address from the White House on the Duties of Citizenship, November 3, 1924.
Incidentally, the slideshow at the top of this post shows Calvin and Grace Coolidge completing their absentee ballots for the 1924 election. All photos are courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
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