Re: Coolidge. Same here. There are some great books out there about Coolidge. My favorites are Sobel’s Coolidge: An American Enigma, Claude Fuess’s Calvin Coolidge: The Man From Vermont, Silent Cal’s Almanack edited by David Pietrusza and Coolidge and the Historians by Thomas B. Silver, and let’s not forget Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. The Silver book demolishes liberal academia’s deliberate distortions about Coolidge.
Some little known facts about Coolidge:
1) elected to more public offices than any of our presidents
2) graduated from Amherst with honors
3) only president sworn in in his boyhood home (by his father who was a notary), which had no plumbing or electricity. A coal oil lamp was used to illuminate the scene
4) last president to write all of his speeches?
5) translated Dante’s Inferno and the Orations of Cicero
6) before “Reagan Democrats” there were “Coolidge Democrats”
7) his wife was the first First Lady to graduate from college (and also the first to smoke cigarettes) - she was delightful in everyway
8) Mencken, who didn’t care much for any politicos, had high praise for his prose style. He also said that Coolidge was our last Jeffersonian president
9) Will Rogers said (sincerely) that Coolidge was the funniest and wittiest man he’d ever met.
10) he was honest in everyway and also lived frugally. He rented a home (duplex) for $30.00 a month up until the time he became Vice-President
11) last president not to fly in an airplane
12) last Republican to carry New York city
13) like Lincoln he lost a son (Calvin Coolidge Jr.) while in the White House. Cal Jr. had stubbed his toe while playing tennis, it became infected, and he died of blood poisoning. All this in 1924 when he ran and won the presidency in his own right (he defeated a Wall Street lawyer, Davis and running mate FDR) in a landslide
14) called Hoover the “Wonder Boy.” “That man (Hoover) has given me nothing but unsolicited advice every since I’ve been president, all of it bad”
15) he loved reform but hated reformers which he called “world beaters”
16) had more press conferences (twice a week) than any president, 520 in all
17) he thought it better not to pass bad laws than to pass good ones
18) his White House Staff was smaller than his staff when he was Governor of Massachusetts
And one other thing, Grace Coolidge was one of our greatest First Ladies. There is a great photo out there of her with her pet raccoon at the White House. Cal on Grace: “For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, and I have rejoiced in her graces.”
And believe it or no, Mother Jones endorsed Coolidge for President! Reagan was right to have that painting of Coolidge in the Oval Office. And the link between Coolidge, JFK and Reagan?
Comparing the magnitude of the Coolidge, Kennedy and Reagan income tax cuts:
•In the 1920s, Coolidge cut the marginal tax rate from 70 percent to 25 percent; revenues increased from $719 million in 1921 to $1.164 billion in 1927, or by 61 percent.
•In the 1960s, Kennedy cut the marginal tax rate from 90 percent to 70 percent, increasing revenues from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, or 62 percent (inflation adjusted 33 percent).
•In the 1980s, Reagan cut the marginal tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent; revenues increased from $517 billion in 1980 to $990 billion in 1990, or 99.4 percent (inflation adjusted, 28 percent).
Comparing the impact of the Coolidge, Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts:
•The 1920s Coolidge tax cuts caused the percentage of income tax revenues paid by those with incomes over $50,000 to rise from 44.2 percent of the total in 1921 to 78.4 percent in 1928.
•The 1960s tax cuts caused the percentage of income tax revenues paid by those with incomes over $50,000 to rise from 11.6 percent of the total in 1963 to 15.1 percent in 1928.
•The 1980s Reagan tax cuts caused the percentage of income tax revenues paid by the top 10 percent of earners to rise from 48 percent of the total in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988.
Kennedy learned from Coolidge and his great Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAEp0J_hzU
Excellent and thanks for sharing. Of all you wrote this stood out to me:
17) he thought it better not to pass bad laws than to pass good ones
Too often we hear that government needs to do something. It’s more likely to do something wrong than right because markets cure themselves given enough time. We have too many laws and following precept 17 we would be much better off.
