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Calvin Coolidge and Grace Coolidge

President Calvin Coolidge earns a place in both the Presidential and conservative sections of this web site. Coolidge worked his way up the political ladder from farm boy in Vermont to Massachusetts mayor, state representative, lieutenant governor, governor and then on the federal level as Vice President and 30th President of the United States. Despite that history he was a remarkably apolitical animal, even resisting what are now irresistible political demands for federal disaster relief when storms and floods hit. And unlike any modern politician, he asked first whether any action proposed was consistent with his powers under the United States Constitution.

Yet, when he decided not to run again for President in 1928 he was an extraordinarily popular political figure because his low tax and low federal interference policies had unleashed a private sector which brought America historically unprecedented material innovation and prosperity. But the New Deal politicians and historians felt they had to denigrate his person and presidency to justify the centralization of power in the federal government proposed and implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and congress. As a result in the 1930s the Coolidge presidency fell in esteem and text books and most historians since have given him unjustifiably low marks.

But in his devotion to federalism and the United States Constitution none of the presidents of the 20th century out rank Calvin Coolidge.