Cool With Coolidge

My wife and I have an understanding.

If historian Amity Shlaes, author of the best seller, Coolidge, ever came to the house and asked to give me a smoochie-woochie right on the mouth, my wife would have to let her.

Shlaes is a different type of historian: easy on the eyes. Before Shlaes hit the scene, we history buffs had to make do with Doris Kerns Goodwin. It is rough being a history major.

 There was nobody in the history department at Kennesaw State University that looked like this when I was there.



Before Coolidge, Shlaes wrote The Forgotten Man, which was about The Depression. It gave a new twist on The Depression.

Here’s what I always read, heard and learned about The Depression from school and parents. The Depression was caused by Hebert Hoover and The Republicans because they wanted people to starve to death. They thought it was great that people were jumping out of buildings, selling apples, and asking their buddies if they had a dime. THEN, Franklin D. Roosevelt rode into town and gave everybody a job.  Soon, we had to go to Germany and Japan to kick some Axis butt.

The Forgotten Man showed this was incorrect. Both Hoover and Roosevelt enacted policies that were counter productive and caused The Depression to last longer than it should have. The Forgotten Man was an incredible book because it actually changed they way I looked at an historical event.

Shlaes’ follow up is Coolidge. It is a book you must read because if you are anything like me, you don’t know a lot about Calvin Coolidge.  I knew he was the 30^th President of The United States and I knew he had that dry New England wit.

Man: (meeting The President in a receiving line) “I bet my friend $50.00 that I can get you to say three words.”

Coolidge: “You lose”


Shlaes puts flesh and bones on this historical character that frankly history placed in the dust bin for no particular reason aside from the fact that he was a Republican. His story is amazing; he rose quickly in Republican politics, serving only two years as the Governor of Massachusetts before he was elected Vice President. He assumed the Presidency after the death of the wild and crazy President Warren G. Harding (the Bill Clinton of his era).

 

Shlaes argues that Coolidge was “a rare kind of hero: a minimalist president”. His “inaction” was really his strength. A lot of Presidents  since then could have learned that lesson.

Here’s a bit of Coolidge trivia. His Vice President was Charles Dawes. Dawes wrote a song in 1912 called “Melody in A Major”. It was transformed in 1958 as “It’s All In The Game”. If Al Gore had done that you would have never heard the end of it.

             When you win the trivia contest, you will thank me.


Shlaes makes you like this odd-ball of an historical character. One poignant thing about Coolidge was his Calvinism which caused him to dread good things happening because it meant something bad was going to happen. In 1924, shortly after Coolidge became President, one of his sons died from Sepsis. This is what Coolidge had to say about it.

“In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.
When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.
The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.
I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.”

Coolidge is a great book. Read it and fall in love with Amity Shlaes.  But I’m warning you: I saw her first.