The triumph of Calvin Coolidge

And why historians won't acknowledge it

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I attended a conference on “Coolidge and the American Project” at the Library of Congress. The conference was hosted by the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Coolidge being sworn in as president (by his father, a justice of the peace in Vermont).

The two-day program covered all major aspects of Coolidge’s life, from his grade school education until the end of his presidency. It also included an exploration of the economic and social settings of the 1920s.

Having read a fair amount about this period, I came to the conference believing that 80 to 90 percent of what I was taught in public school about Coolidge and his era is incorrect. If the speakers at last week’s conference are right, make that 90 to 100 percent.

Here is a brief summary of the discussion of the era and the two presidents who presided over it:

The U.S. came out of World War I with massive problems. The economy fell into a deep recession. According to one speaker (or at least my notes), unemployment rose to more than 10 percent, GDP fell by 15 percent, and the Dow Jones average dropped more than 30 percent.

Race relations were terrible. Blacks suffered due to Woodrow Wilson’s rollback of civil rights. Lynching and race riots — usually in the form of whites attacking blacks — were not uncommon.

Revolutionary sentiment, inspired by the the success of the Bolsheviks, was in the air. Labor unrest and work stoppages were the order of the day. And, to top it all off, the country was experiencing a pandemic worse than the one we recently came out of.

The Harding-Coolidge administration addressed the nation’s economic woes by cutting both taxes and spending. It also established the Bureau of the Budget to keep close tabs on federal spending.

Facing resistance from Democrats and progressive Republicans led by Sen. La Follette, the administration was able, initially, to reduce the top tax rate only from the low 70s to a little more than 50 percent. After Coolidge was elected in 1924, Republicans eventually got it down to around 25 percent. But even with the more modest cuts of the Harding years, together with the decrease in federal spending, the economy quickly came out of recession.

The Roaring 20s followed. They roared loudly enough that even with the sharp reductions in taxation, federal tax revenues increased during the decade (and the taxes paid by the bottom 10 percent decreased as a percentage of all taxes paid). Car ownership became the rule not the exception. So did electrification. This was a period of unprecedented prosperity.

All booms come to an end. The boom of the 1920s ended seven or eight years after it began, which is normal. The stock market underwent a huge correction and panic ensued, which is also normal.

The response of the Hoover administration, and later that of FDR, was exactly the opposite of the Harding-Coolidge response. The government increased taxes, increased spending in the hope of stimulating the economy, and unlike Harding and Coolidge, pressured employers to keep wages high.

We all know the outcome. What might have been a very serious but fairly short-lived recession turned into a depression that plagued America for the better part of a decade.

The Harding-Coolidge era wasn’t just one of prosperity. It was also a time of improved, albeit unsatisfactory, race relations. The two presidents reversed both the tone and some policies of Wilson. Harding pushed for anti-lynching legislation, but racist Democrats blocked this effort.

Given the successes of these two presidents and the good times America enjoyed under their leadership, how is it that Harding is rated as one of our worse presidents and Coolidge is rated slightly below average?

It’s not enough to say they were Republicans or even that they were non-progressive. Dwight Eisenhower and William McKinley rate #5 and #14 respectively.

Even U.S Grant, once rated along with Harding at the bottom of the heap, is now rated in the top half. This reevaluation — helped, no doubt, by appreciation by liberal historians of his heroic but futile Reconstruction efforts — is well deserved.

In my view, Harding and Coolidge suffer because they are viewed as interrupting “the arc of history” — an offense than which, to a progressive, there can be no greater To the leftist mind, the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson should have led directly to FDR and the New Deal. Instead, America got eight years of “normalcy.” (Many liberal historians would count the Hoover presidency and say 12 years. However, as noted, Hoover’s policies were a sharp and unfortunate break from those of his two predecessors.)

Harding and Coolidge cannot be forgiven for this affront to history. And their administrations certainly cannot be viewed in anything like a positive light.

Yet, as I argued here, Harding’s brief presidency compares well with John Kennedy’s brief one. Coolidge’s compares well with Eisenhower’s and, from a purely domestic perspective, with Reagan’s. (Coolidge didn’t have to fight a Cold War.)

Finally, I want to add that both Harding and Coolidge, though anathema to progressive historians, were in some ways progressive. Harding’s progressive tendency comes through, I hope, in my piece about his presidency.

Coolidge, I never viewed as progressive. However, speakers at last week’s conference argued that he was “mildly progressive” in important respects — a “pragmatic” or “incremental” progressive.

His view of race relations was progressive for the times. He was a consistent supporter of female suffrage. And as a state legislator and governor, he strongly supported measures to improve working conditions — a pretty good litmus test for progressivism in the early 20th century.

Coolidge’s reputation as a reactionary rests in part on the hard line he took as governor against striking policemen in Boston. But Coolidge was not a hardliner on labor relations when the public safety wasn’t involved. Indeed, one speaker said the Boston policemen went on strike believing that, because of Coolidge’s past approach to labor disputes, he would mediate this one. He likely would have done, but for the effect of the police strike on the safety of Bostonians.

The unrest of 1919 and 1920 caused Coolidge (and the American electorate) to take a turn towards conservatism. He remained sympathetic to some important progressive goals but was staunchly opposed to their implementation by a powerful federal government.

This was enough to earn him low marks from historians. It may also have been a key to the success of his presidency.