Coolidge, by Amity Shlaes

It is not too surprising that the author’s writing of The Forgotten Man, a book about the Great Depression, would lead her to write a book about the president who presided over the period of wealth that came before the Depression.  After all, a great many writers do research for context and then realize in the course of writing one book that they have the background knowledge and interest to write another related book as well.  David McCullough wrote John Adams and then had enough material to write 1776, and this book feels like it is in the same category, an excellent work that serves as a natural extension of the author’s previous interests that serves to make her even more of a scholar equipped to deal with questions of constitutional law and the history of the interwar period.  The author’s general interest in questions of the constitutional limitations on federal power and the way that politicians in Congress were continually looking to transgress those boundaries certainly help her out here in that she has a perspective that allows her to appreciate Coolidge and what he offered as a president, which is rare, given that it is easier to cheer on presidents who are manically active rather than those who have the strength of restraint.

This particular book is a sizable one at over 450 pages, and it certainly took me a while to read.  The book is divided into fifteen large chapters, and it covers the span of Coolidge’s entire life, from his humble beginnings in hardscrabble Vermont in an area so remote that it had no train access and thus missed out on the benefits of trade with the larger world of New England, to Coolidge’s rise to the presidency and his short retirement.  The author looks at Coolidge’s move from Vermont to Massachusetts to study at Amherst, and how he was an outsider who slowly gained in prominence and achievement as a student before working as a country lawyer in Northampton and showing himself loyal in local Republican politics, eventually serving in the General Court as well as the state Senate.  The author even shows how Coolidge came to national prominence as a governor who was tough on striking policemen, which gave him a spot as Harding’s VP and the White House when Harding died in office as scandals were breaking all around him, spending most of the rest of the time looking at Coolidge as a president.

How one ranks Coolidge as a president depends greatly on how one values restraint and temperamental conservatism.  Coolidge was a taciturn and frequently awkward person, but he was certainly someone who could inspire loyalty even if he was seldom well understood.  Admittedly, I am perhaps more prone to appreciate Coolidge than most people, even if I am not a particularly laconic person as Coolidge was notorious for being, largely because I can well understood being being an outsider and someone who is rather restrained and prone, as a consequence, to being greatly misunderstood.  Recognizing the effect that the White House was having on his own health and the state of his marriage, and on his general irritability and all that, Coolidge restrained from seeking another term in office when he knew he could have won it, although it is a historical mystery as to how much better he would have handled the Great Depression than Hoover and Roosevelt did, who generally made a mess of it.  To think of the 20th century without the Great Depression being so great and without the New Deal or the triumph of experimentation and federal overreach is quite a dream to some readers, I imagine.