Got a chance to visit his homestead a few years ago...
Posted on 04/04/2015 10:01:49 AM PDT by NRx
President Coolidge delivers the first presidential speech recorded with sound and video on the lawn of the White House in 1924. Coolidge was hands down the most conservative president since Grover Cleveland (another good president). An argument could be made that Coolidge was really the last constitutional conservative president
Some facts about Mr. Coolidge:
He was the only president born on the 4th of July.
He held more elective offices than any other president.
As governor of Massachusetts he broke the Boston Police strike of 1919 and was quoted as saying "There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime, by anybody." President Reagan repeated that line when he broke the PATCO strike in 1981.
During his presidency the top tax rate rate fell to about 25% after having peaked at 77% under Woodrow Wilson. Most Americans paid little or not taxes.
Coolidge was the last president to balance the budget every year he was in office. He reduced the national debt by about a quarter.
During his administration the unemployment rate fell to around 3% and remained there until after he left office. The economy expanded at the fastest rate in history up to that time. By time he left office more than 70% of American homes had electricity and the number of people who owned a car skyrocketed.
Coolidge was the last president save one to adhere to the traditional American foreign policy of non-interventionism.
Cal was the last president to write all of his own speeches, and he never owned a car until after leaving office. (He bought his first and only car used from the government.) He never owned his own home until late in retirement, always renting. The only reason he eventually gave in and bought a house with some land was for privacy. In retirement he liked to sit on the front porch of his little duplex and smoke cigars while reading but the endless stream of the curious and sightseers eventually became too much of a distraction.
He was as famous for his economy with words as he was with money. Known as "Silent Cal," he was the subject of innumerable jokes and funny stories.
Coolidge made another DeForest Phono-Film in May of 1925. He read portions of his Inaugural Address (of March4, 1925). This film is not on YouTube.
Got a chance to visit his homestead a few years ago...
My absolute favorite Coolidge story:
An important hostess seated next to him at dinner told him why he just HAD to talk to her: “You must talk to me Mr. Coolidge. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you.”
Coolidge told her: “You lose.”
Funny...I have read books and watched documentaries, but never heard him speak (like most people in his lifetime, apparently!)
I loved watching the video. It fit perfectly, the accent, everything. My wife rolled her eyes at me too...:)
I’m jealous you got to the homestead. Great picture.
Coolidge was hands down the most conservative president since Grover Cleveland (another good president).Seriously? Grover Cleveland?
A decent Yankee
Hugs out there in the cosmosphere Cal
But hey....smile every now and then
It’s not just Y’all
It’s most of the white race or West
The kids.....brainwashed by culture
It is pretty cool. They have restored the room where he was sworn in...it is a very pretty place, in a bit of a holler in rural Vermont. Very humble.
Different place.
Different time.
“Seriously? Grover Cleveland?”
You need to read up on Cleveland. If he were President today, I’d be a Democrat.
There was an effusive bio of him, hmm, about ten years ago; while I admire the fact that he married a much younger woman and got her to spit out kids like a vending machine, and that he favored lower tariffs (that’s the issue that beat him his second try), and he prefigured Coolidge and Truman in his settling of strikes, if he were in office today, FR would be a non-stop condemnation of his crony capitalistic ways. :’) As I noted in the William Henry Harrison topic yesterday, two-termers are, for the most part, among our better presidents, and that isn’t a very large list.
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