I confess to a certain soft spot for Calvin Coolidge. Partly just local affinity: I am from New Hampshire, he is from Vermont. But there's more. He had an appealing lack of pomposity and a self-deflating wit. He thought Herbert Hoover a pious gasbag. And he probably had better temperamental instincts on race than any president before Lyndon Johnson.
I haven't read Amity Shlaes' new biography--or is it a hagiography? But with blowback like this, the consequence so far is to remind me of all the reasons I never should have gone soft on him in the first place.
Meanwhile, here's a fascinating capsule on the place of Coolidge in the history of big government.
I haven't read Amity Shlaes' new biography--or is it a hagiography? But with blowback like this, the consequence so far is to remind me of all the reasons I never should have gone soft on him in the first place.
Meanwhile, here's a fascinating capsule on the place of Coolidge in the history of big government.
4 comments:
Speaking of <a href='http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/no-amity-shlaes-has-no-idea-what-she-is-talking-about-why-do-you-ask-wtf-weblogging.html">blowback...
(I know you read deLong and would have seen this eventually without my help).
Oops.
Let's clean that up:
Speaking of blowback...
(I know you read deLong and would have seen this eventually without my help).
Partly just local affinity: I am from New Hampshire, he is from Vermont.
Must have been awhile since you've spent much time here (perhaps the 1 man 1 vote redistricting c. 50 years ago that changed VT's political complexion?). My impression is that outside the area along the border, there's not a whole heckuva lot of mutual admiration between the 2 states.
Happy marcel beat me to the DeLong link; let's this be single-subject.
Note for the record: it was Hoover's leadership after that 1927 flood that made him popular enough to be elected. (Unless you want to argue that Secretary of Commerce is training for the Presidency.) And that leadership very much included segregation, ensuring that it was the Black workers who would be in the most danger.
If you're going to credit Mr. "You lose" with good racial instincts, keep in mind that he put Hoover in his cabinet, and then facilitated his ascension. He may have known better but--as with GHWB seventy years later--he gave him the rolodex and put him in position to use it.
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