Amity Shlaes’ Next Book To Focus on The Forgotten President
In 2007, Amity Shlaes memorably placed the story of The Depression into a modern context in 2007′s The Forgotten Man, along with its focus on Hoover and FDR and the impact in human terms of their disastrous decisions. For her next book, she’s taking on the story of their immediate predecessor, Silent Cal. According to Amazon’s coming soon list for the Kindle, on June 26th (in a date that could very well be subject to change), Amity Shlaes next book will be Coolidge.
In February, Shlaes discussed what made the 30th president such an intriguing figure:
Shlaes became interested in Coolidge while writing her 2007 book The Forgotten Man about the Great Depression.
“Working on that book I realized that Coolidge is the forgotten president,” she said. “Which is unfortunate because when he left office the federal government was smaller than when he entered it. The economy was growing at four percent annually, taxes were low, and the budget was balanced.”
Coolidge wasn’t your typical politician, Shlaes says.
“We think of politicians as active. We want a superman as president. But there’s another model posed by Coolidge. He achieved by inaction.
“He was the great refrainer. If he was a sport it would be wind surfing. It looks easy but it’s very difficult. It takes lots of core strength, lots of balance. His political strength was concentrated on resistance rather than acquiescence.”
A native of Vermont, Coolidge seems the very essence of New England Yankee reticence.
Shlaes believes that was a role he consciously adopted.
“Coolidge was a ham who played to that classic New England type. It was politically expedient because it allowed him to turn people down more easily.”
Coolidge said “no” in many ways.
“He used the veto a lot,” Shlaes says. “He had this concept that entitlements were wrong. He vetoed agricultural subsidies, even though he was from a farming community.
“He vetoed bonuses for veterans of World War I. Now that may not have worked out for individual veterans, but it was good for the overall economy. It meant that those veterans’ family members could find jobs.”
Coolidge is often regarded as having a 19th century mentality, but Shlaes notes that he was progressive and modern in many areas.
As a Republican he decried racism as being at odds with the essential aims of American democracy.
That puts him one up on both Wilson and FDR. And given some of his mentors and statements, perhaps our current president as well. And speaking of 2012 and its echoes of the past, in a recent column at Bloomberg, Shlaes writes, “Watch Bernanke’s ‘Little’ Inflation Capsize U.S.:”
A little is all right. That’s the message Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been giving out recently when asked about the evidence of inflation in the U.S. recovery.
Sometimes Bernanke doesn’t even go that far. He simply says he doesn’t see inflation. The Fed chairman recently described the prospects for price increases across the board as “subdued.”
“Sudden” is more like it. The thing about inflation is that it comes out of nowhere and hits you. Monetary policy is like sailing. You’re gliding along, passing the peninsula, and you come about. Nothing. Then the wind fills the sail so fast it knocks you into the sea. Right now, the U.S. is a sailboat that has just made open water, and has already come about. That wind is coming. The sailor just doesn’t know it.
“Sudden” has happened to us before. In World War I, an early version of what we would call the CPI-U, the consumer price index for urban areas, went from 1 percent for 1915 to 7 percent in 1916 to 17 percent in 1917. To returning vets, that felt awful sudden.
How did it happen? The Treasury spent like crazy on the war, creating money to pay for it, then pretended that its spending was offset by complex Liberty Bond sales and admonishments to citizens that they save more.
Say, that last item rings a bell: Reason’s Hit & Run blog has your “Photo of the Day: Remember When Ads Tried to Get You to Spend?”
We’ve clearly turned some corner in the dumbification of America when ad campaigns stop trying to pry us from our natural thrift in order to encourage spending, and instead try to put across thrift as a novel and exciting concept. But the issue isn’t that we lack financial literacy. It’s that our actual experience of the dollars in our pockets is teaching us all the wrong lessons.
One more book listed as coming on June 26th — from the sublime 30th president to his ridiculous modern successor, Hugh Hewitt’s next book is also listed at Amazon: The Brief Against Obama: The Rise, Fall & Epic Fail of the Hope & Change Presidency.
“The Treasury spent like crazy on the war, creating money to pay for it, then pretended that its spending was offset by complex Liberty Bond sales”
Odd, that Democrat staffers and foreign spies advised Bush to push to war, and then blamed short-sighted, greedy CPAC Republicans (partially right).
Weren’t Pelosi’s husband and Reid’s brother two of the biggest contractor beneficiaries in the Iraq campaign?
The left-wing noise was just Dems negotiating the price.
Behind the war was the need to keep petrodollars offshore from rushing back home in a tsunami of inflation.
The good news is we have the only military in the world with field experience in the Islamic bloc, beyond aging Russian veterans, and Israel.
These were training wars.
Poor Obama. He swept into office the next FDR and Lincoln but now looks to leave coming off second-best to Calvin Coolidge and Rutherford B. Hayes.
James, you have the right idea, but the wrong presidents for comparisons. Coolidge and Rutherford Hayes, despite not being well known, were actually very good presidents, better than both Bushes, Clinton, much better than Woodrow Wilson, on a par with Reagan and FDR, and just behind Lincoln. One big reason why both Coolidge and Hayes were both very good, and not well known or highly raned by historians, is specifically because they didn’t do much, they properly resisted the unwise tendencies of their peers for excessive gov action, and kept control of spending, debt, regulation, and taxes. Historians all too often measure presidents by how much they change things, or by winning wars, but often I think it is much more important to RESIST changing things in an unwise way, and preserve peace. Basically, Coolidge and Hayes best accomplishment was their lack of accomplishments.
A better comparison for Obama would be presidential disasters, like Hoover, or Carter. In my opinion, Obama is worse than both of them.
Harding was also an excellent president, solidly in the laissez-faire wing of the Republican party. The economy recovered quickly from the serious depression of 1921 as a result of his hands-off policies.
Shlaes co-wrote a great piece on Harding for NRO last year.
Awesome comment.
FDR was really a mixed bag. Positively awful from an economic management perspective, he was nonetheless a great communicator allowing him to maintain a moderate “progressive” agenda in the face of calls for more radical socialist action. Like Lincoln, he sometimes took anti-democratic measures to pursue his objectives, for good or bad. And of course, he was a great war president able to rally the nation to a noble cause, again like Lincoln. Lincoln is better because he didn’t have to deal with persistent economic malaise during his term, malaise caused by FDR’s own policies (despite ongoing PR to the contrary).
You’re correct that some of the best presidents are those who exercised prudent restraint, but historians always discount that trait. If only they would count the “promote the general welfare” clause of the pre-amble more thoroughly as one of the goals of government, would appreciate politicians like Hayes, Harding, and Coolidge. Their prudence created economic prosperity of far greater value to their contemporary constituents than many far more activist colleagues.
I have a mulipart study of Coolidge over at ChicagoBoyz if anyone wants a preview.
“The Forgotten Man” was masterful.
If “Coolidge” is only one-half as good, it will be a fitting tribute to a leader we could so dearly use today.
We think of politicians as active. We want a superman as president. But there’s another model posed by Coolidge. He achieved by inaction.
Here’s a classic description of Coolidge’s style of governance, from Walter Lippman’s 1926 Men of Destiny
“Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent activity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge and no one should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for a soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is, on the contrary, a steady application of the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity whenever there are signs of life.”
“You Lose.”
Coolidge to a waitress who had bet that she could get him to say three words.
I do wonder though. Things went well under Coolidge but almost as soon as he left office the bottom dropped out of the economy. Something was going on in the background that set things up for the Depression that FDR turned into the Great Depression. Was it a result of Silent Cal’s leaving something undone or was it going to happen no matter what? If he had been President instead of Hoover would we have called them Coolidgevilles or would things have turned around over the next three years?
Fred,
“If he had been President instead of Hoover would we have called them Coolidgevilles or would things have turned around over the next three years?”
I think things would have turned around much faster. But Jonah Goldberg answered one aspect of that topic in a recent column:
We were very lucky that the Reagan administration — led by a man who admired Coolidge — was at the helm in October of 1987, rather than an administration that would have gone into full-blown panic mode.