July 4, 2009
FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE LAST CONSERVATIVE:
Coolidge restored confidence in White House (THOMAS ROESER, September 4, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)
Today a campaign poster occupies a central place in my study; a gift from my friend Ray Soucek. Bush-Cheney? No, Coolidge-Dawes, the team that won a landslide election 80 years ago this fall. Only two 20th century presidents rate four stars in my revisionist's history: Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge. Why Coolidge, who next to Reagan was anything but showy, a taciturn New Englander; laconic, not voluble, and phenomenally tight with a buck?Because in addition to being a spectacular economic and foreign policy success, Coolidge was the last president to fulfill the ideal of the founders not to usurp the Congress, overpromise or pander. He truly was The Man who took over from the underappreciated Warren Harding, who died mid-term. On his own, Coolidge cut taxes in 1924 and '26, ending Wilson's excise taxes, which unleashed private investment to produce a solidly robust economy -- yet was not a supply-sider, insisting his tax cuts be accompanied by reductions in spending -- wisely cut the immigration quota to 150,000 yearly -- brilliantly restored confidence in the White House's integrity through innovation, by naming two special counsels (a first) -- a Democrat and a Republican -- to investigate and prosecute scandals hanging over from the Harding administration (with which history shows Harding had no connection).
Choosing a vice president is the president's great task. Coolidge picked one of the greatest of all time, Evanston's Charles G. Dawes (a self-made multimillionaire banker who lost his fortune in the panic of 1893, then re-made it; a brilliant administrator who ran the first budget bureau, whereby he turned a deficit into a surplus that lasted through the Coolidge years). Coolidge was the last president to completely write his own speeches.
Mr. Coolidge's reputation is diminished only by the fact that he governed in relative quiet rather than in time of crisis. You'd think that would raise it instead.
[originally posted: 2004-09-06]
