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Russ Pulliam: Calvin Coolidge's competence made up for lack of his charisma

Feb. 8, 2013
Calvin Coolidge


He believed in balanced budgets. He was a cheapskate and imposed that virtue on government. He wasn't physically imposing or charismatic and didn't light up any room he entered, at least not until people heard him speak.

He was more introvert than extrovert but disciplined himself to become a competent campaigner.

That describes Mitch Daniels as governor of Indiana.

It also was true of President Calvin Coolidge, as set forth in a new biography by Amity Shlaes.

Shlaes is the right person to write this story because she rejects the notion that the measure of presidential greatness is based on capacity to expand the federal government. In fact, she suggests that a Coolidge virtue was how he shrank the federal government in the 1920s. She calls him "the great refrainer," offering a different model of leadership.

In an earlier book, "The Forgotten Man," Shlaes suggested that Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression, which wasn't resolved until our entry into World War II.

Shlaes' willingness to question conventional wisdom shows up in this Coolidge biography as well. She shows how he brought a small-town modesty to an office that often attracts big, sometimes imbalanced personalities. Think of Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson or maybe Bill Clinton.

Coolidge served humbly and didn't succumb to the fiction that the federal government must tackle every problem.

His biography is timely because Coolidge faced a federal debt similar to our current one. Calling it "cheese paring," he took a knife to the federal budget to tackle the problem. The results included federal income tax cuts, budget surpluses and a business boom.

Shlaes puzzles over the neglect of Coolidge among historians. It's true that he didn't talk much, a trait that earned him the nickname "Silent Cal." But he got results.

"He was principally a man of work," Shlaes concludes. "Indeed, Coolidge was a rare kind of hero: a minimalist president, an economic general of budgeting and tax cuts. Economic heroism is subtler than other forms of heroism, harder to appreciate."

Now the nation faces a more than $16 trillion debt and potential bankruptcy down the road. Because of that reality, Coolidge's story is more interesting than ever. In times of financial crisis, charisma is less important than competence.

Pulliam is associate editor of The Star. Contact him at (317) 444-6001 or at russell.pulliam@indystar.com.

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