Calvin Coolidge: The Hipster’s Favorite President

Remember that activity where you and your classmates or friends go around and list their favorite president (please say this isn’t just me)?

Well, I always had a unique answer. Everyone always picked Lincoln or Washington or FDR, but I always had a soft spot for Silent Cal.

I was the only one in my circles to ever mention Coolidge, so I guess you could say I was a hipster before it was cool to be a hipster. A meta-hipster?

On a serious note, though. Coolidge was a rare leader. Like Grover Cleveland, he had the courage of convictions which allowed him to exercise restraint.

This rarest gem of executive recognition of subsidiarity requires a humility and confidence to resist pressure to act.

Cleveland demonstrated this in withholding federal aid to natural disaster victims when he could not find a Constitutional article which justified its dispensation.

Coolidge carried on Harding’s policies that prevented the recession of 1920-21 from looking like that of 1929.

The refusal to mettle in the economic sphere through political fiat required a virtue that later men like Hoover and FDR lacked entirely.

So the next time you are asked who your favorite president is, be different and claim Coolidge!