Calvin Coolidge is not my favorite President. For all
his intelligence and integrity, he failed to see that in aggregate, massive
inequality could produce a power imbalance, and that sometimes the President, acting with Congress, should try to redress the situation lest it damage the fabric of our society and government.
Moreover, on an individual level, in claiming that “Wealth
is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort,” he could
not see that some plutocrats have risen by dint of their ancestors or by their
own chicanery.
All the same, Coolidge had a becoming sense of modesty.
It’s a quality lacking in another Republican past (and possibly future)
President, who told his party’s convention eight years ago, “Nobody knows the
system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it”—or, more recently, that
he would be a dictator on “Day One.”
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