Calvin Coolidge: The Fiscally Responsible President
Calvin Coolidge was called "Silent Cal" for the fact that when he was a man of few words. A famous story (perhaps even a true one) is told about a woman who was seated next to Calvin Coolidge at a dinner, who said to him, "I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." He replied, "You lose." When Coolidge died, the famed wit Dorothy Parker remarked, "How can they tell?" Coolidge often seemed uncomfortable among fashionable Washington society. He was once asked why he continued to attend so many fancy D.C. dinner parties. He replied, "Got to eat somewhere." Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, described the 30th President of the United States with these words: "He looked then precisely as though he had been weaned on a pickle." Coolidge's silence was calculated. As president, he wrote, "The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately." He once told Ethel Barrymore, "I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President, and I think I will go along with them." Some historians suggest that Coolidge's image was created deliberately as a campaign tactic. Others believe his withdrawn and quiet manner was natural, particularly after the tragic death of his son in 1924.
But there was more to Calvin Coolidge than just his sullen and withdrawn disposition. John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born in Vermont, the son of a local farmer and storekeeper who was also the Justice of the Peace, and who administered the oath of office to his son, when President Warren Harding died. Coolidge was born on the 4th of July. After graduating from Amherst College, he practiced law in Northampton, Massachusetts. From there he worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, service as mayor of his city, representing his community in both houses of the state legislature and eventually becoming governor of the state. His strong principled response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 cast him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. He didn't have the outgoing personality to be considered as a strong presidential candidate, but he was a perfect choice for he number two spot on the ticket, alongside the ebullient Warren G. Harding. In the election of 1920 Coolidge was elected vice president of the United States. He became President upon the sudden unexpected death of Warren G. Harding in August of 1923. After completing Harding's term, Coolidge was elected to the Presidency in 1924. He gained a reputation as a small government conservative and also as a man of few words with a dry sense of humor.
Coolidge is credited with restoring public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity. His modest New England roots gave him a connection with the common man and with the middle class. He is credited with cutting government waste, and for reducing the deficit while also cutting taxes. He signed the Indian Citizenship Act and unsuccessfully pressed for passage of a federal anti-lynching law. He has been criticized for his response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, seeing flood relief as a state issue rather than a federal one. He refused to visit the region because he believed it would serve no other purpose than political grandstanding. He was also an opponent of farm subsidies. Coolidge presided over a health economy and a time of rapid economic growth. In an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he told his audience: "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world."
Scholars have ranked Coolidge in the lower half of those presidents in most assessments. He is praised by conservatives, some libertarians and other advocates of small government and laissez-faire economics. He is also praised for his record on civil rights. When Warren Harding died in August of 1923, Coolidge inherited an economic contraction that many blamed on the tax cuts and spending cuts initiated during Harding's presidency. When Congress reconvened in December of 1923 following Harding's death, Coolidge promised to continue many of the policies of his predecessor. The new president signed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced the top marginal personal income tax rate from 58% to 46%, decreased personal income tax rates across the board, increased the estate tax and created a gift tax designed to restrict tax evasion.
Coolidge's taxation policy was on the same page as those of his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. Like Harding and Mellon, Coolidge believed that at a certain level, lower taxes actually increase rather than decrease government revenue. Congress also agreed, and the taxes were reduced in Coolidge's term. Coolidge proposed further reductions in federal spending and retiring some of the federal debt. This had the support of the Republicans in Congress, and in 1924 Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced income tax rates and eliminated all income taxation for some two million people. Over the rest of Coolidge's term, taxes were reduced again by the Revenue Acts of 1926 and 1928. All the while Coolidge continued to keep spending down so as to reduce the overall federal debt. By 1927, only the richest 2% of taxpayers paid any federal income tax. During Coolidge's administration, one-fourth of the federal debt was retired, while state and local governments saw considerable growth.
Coolidge was generally popular during his presidency, but the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 damaged his reputation, as many linked the economic troubles to Coolidge's hands-off economic policies. Coolidge's reputation in foreign policy also suffered in the 1930s. Many viewed the Dawes Plan as a failure. (This was a 1924 plan proposed by a committee chaired by Vice-President Charles Dawes intended to resolve the World War I reparations that Germany had to pay). Coolidge's critics argued that this and other policies had done little to prevent the rise of international hostilities that were building in Europe.
Coolidge's small government philosophy was in contradiction to that of later Presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Coolidge offered little in the way of aid to farmers. He said "Farmers never have made much money, I do not believe we can do much about it." When the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 struck, Coolidge viewed flood relief as a state and local issue.
Coolidge's reputation would enjoy a resurgence in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan and other conservatives looked to the Coolidge administration as a model of laissez-faire policy. Reagan's "Laffer Curve" tax policy was modeled off of what Coolidge had done. Many historians praise Coolidge for avoiding major scandals and for reducing the national debt. But they also criticize Coolidge's failure to respond to rising stock market speculation.
In 2013 however, historian and Coolidge biographer Amity Schlaes offered a more favorable assessment of the 30th President as she tried to unravel the enigma known as Silent Cal. She wrote:
Perhaps the deepest reason for Coolidge's recent obscurity is that the thirtieth president spoke a different economic language from ours. He did not say "money supply"; he said "credit." He did not say "the federal government"; he said "the national government." He did not say "private sector"; he said "commerce." He did not say "savings"; he said "thrift" or "economy." Indeed, he especially cherished the word "economy" because it came from the Greek for "household." To Coolidge the national household resembled the family household, and to her displeasure he monitored the White House housekeeper with the same vigilance that he monitored the departments of the federal government. Our modern economic lexicon and the theories behind it cannot capture Coolidge's achievements or those of his predecessor, Warren Harding.
It is hard for modern students of economics to know what to make of a government that treated economic weakness by raising interest rates 300 basis points, cutting tax rates, and halving the federal government; so much at odds is that prescription with the antidotes to recession our own experts tend to recommend. It is harder still for modern economists to concede that that recipe, the policy for the early 1920s advocated by Coolidge and Harding, yielded growth on a scale to which we can aspire today. As early at the 1930s, Coolidge's reputation and way of thinking began their decline. Collectives and not individuals became fashionable. Sensing such shifts, Coolidge at the end of his life spoke anxiously about the "importance of the obvious." Perseverance, property rights, contracts, civility to one's opponents, silence, smaller government, trust, certainty, restraint, respect for faith, federalism, economy and thrift: these Coolidge ideals intrigue us today as well. After all, many citizens today do feel cursed by debt, their own or their government's. Knowing the details of his life may well help Americans now turn a curse to a blessing or, at the very least, find the heart to continue their own persevering.
But there was more to Calvin Coolidge than just his sullen and withdrawn disposition. John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born in Vermont, the son of a local farmer and storekeeper who was also the Justice of the Peace, and who administered the oath of office to his son, when President Warren Harding died. Coolidge was born on the 4th of July. After graduating from Amherst College, he practiced law in Northampton, Massachusetts. From there he worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, service as mayor of his city, representing his community in both houses of the state legislature and eventually becoming governor of the state. His strong principled response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 cast him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. He didn't have the outgoing personality to be considered as a strong presidential candidate, but he was a perfect choice for he number two spot on the ticket, alongside the ebullient Warren G. Harding. In the election of 1920 Coolidge was elected vice president of the United States. He became President upon the sudden unexpected death of Warren G. Harding in August of 1923. After completing Harding's term, Coolidge was elected to the Presidency in 1924. He gained a reputation as a small government conservative and also as a man of few words with a dry sense of humor.
Coolidge is credited with restoring public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration, and left office with considerable popularity. His modest New England roots gave him a connection with the common man and with the middle class. He is credited with cutting government waste, and for reducing the deficit while also cutting taxes. He signed the Indian Citizenship Act and unsuccessfully pressed for passage of a federal anti-lynching law. He has been criticized for his response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, seeing flood relief as a state issue rather than a federal one. He refused to visit the region because he believed it would serve no other purpose than political grandstanding. He was also an opponent of farm subsidies. Coolidge presided over a health economy and a time of rapid economic growth. In an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he told his audience: "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world."
Scholars have ranked Coolidge in the lower half of those presidents in most assessments. He is praised by conservatives, some libertarians and other advocates of small government and laissez-faire economics. He is also praised for his record on civil rights. When Warren Harding died in August of 1923, Coolidge inherited an economic contraction that many blamed on the tax cuts and spending cuts initiated during Harding's presidency. When Congress reconvened in December of 1923 following Harding's death, Coolidge promised to continue many of the policies of his predecessor. The new president signed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced the top marginal personal income tax rate from 58% to 46%, decreased personal income tax rates across the board, increased the estate tax and created a gift tax designed to restrict tax evasion.
Coolidge's taxation policy was on the same page as those of his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon. Like Harding and Mellon, Coolidge believed that at a certain level, lower taxes actually increase rather than decrease government revenue. Congress also agreed, and the taxes were reduced in Coolidge's term. Coolidge proposed further reductions in federal spending and retiring some of the federal debt. This had the support of the Republicans in Congress, and in 1924 Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1924, which reduced income tax rates and eliminated all income taxation for some two million people. Over the rest of Coolidge's term, taxes were reduced again by the Revenue Acts of 1926 and 1928. All the while Coolidge continued to keep spending down so as to reduce the overall federal debt. By 1927, only the richest 2% of taxpayers paid any federal income tax. During Coolidge's administration, one-fourth of the federal debt was retired, while state and local governments saw considerable growth.
Coolidge was generally popular during his presidency, but the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 damaged his reputation, as many linked the economic troubles to Coolidge's hands-off economic policies. Coolidge's reputation in foreign policy also suffered in the 1930s. Many viewed the Dawes Plan as a failure. (This was a 1924 plan proposed by a committee chaired by Vice-President Charles Dawes intended to resolve the World War I reparations that Germany had to pay). Coolidge's critics argued that this and other policies had done little to prevent the rise of international hostilities that were building in Europe.
Coolidge's small government philosophy was in contradiction to that of later Presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Coolidge offered little in the way of aid to farmers. He said "Farmers never have made much money, I do not believe we can do much about it." When the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 struck, Coolidge viewed flood relief as a state and local issue.
Coolidge's reputation would enjoy a resurgence in the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan and other conservatives looked to the Coolidge administration as a model of laissez-faire policy. Reagan's "Laffer Curve" tax policy was modeled off of what Coolidge had done. Many historians praise Coolidge for avoiding major scandals and for reducing the national debt. But they also criticize Coolidge's failure to respond to rising stock market speculation.
In 2013 however, historian and Coolidge biographer Amity Schlaes offered a more favorable assessment of the 30th President as she tried to unravel the enigma known as Silent Cal. She wrote:
Perhaps the deepest reason for Coolidge's recent obscurity is that the thirtieth president spoke a different economic language from ours. He did not say "money supply"; he said "credit." He did not say "the federal government"; he said "the national government." He did not say "private sector"; he said "commerce." He did not say "savings"; he said "thrift" or "economy." Indeed, he especially cherished the word "economy" because it came from the Greek for "household." To Coolidge the national household resembled the family household, and to her displeasure he monitored the White House housekeeper with the same vigilance that he monitored the departments of the federal government. Our modern economic lexicon and the theories behind it cannot capture Coolidge's achievements or those of his predecessor, Warren Harding.
It is hard for modern students of economics to know what to make of a government that treated economic weakness by raising interest rates 300 basis points, cutting tax rates, and halving the federal government; so much at odds is that prescription with the antidotes to recession our own experts tend to recommend. It is harder still for modern economists to concede that that recipe, the policy for the early 1920s advocated by Coolidge and Harding, yielded growth on a scale to which we can aspire today. As early at the 1930s, Coolidge's reputation and way of thinking began their decline. Collectives and not individuals became fashionable. Sensing such shifts, Coolidge at the end of his life spoke anxiously about the "importance of the obvious." Perseverance, property rights, contracts, civility to one's opponents, silence, smaller government, trust, certainty, restraint, respect for faith, federalism, economy and thrift: these Coolidge ideals intrigue us today as well. After all, many citizens today do feel cursed by debt, their own or their government's. Knowing the details of his life may well help Americans now turn a curse to a blessing or, at the very least, find the heart to continue their own persevering.