Why Republicans cite Calvin Coolidge

[faethor]

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/...republicans_so_obsessed_with_him_.single.html

 

[cecilia]

well, that's very interesting....but it mostly shows some people can't learn for history

 

[metalman]

This week, Michele Bachmann was asked which presidential faces she would carve into Mount Rushmore if she could. First she said Ronald Reagan—no surprise there. But then, she named Calvin Coolidge.

good answer

Coolidge in fact benefited from the wartime spending under Wilson, which buoyed the economy into the 1920s.

the writer conveniently forgot the depression of 1920

The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. Instead of "fiscal stimulus," Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. Many modern Keynesian economists who have studied the depression of 1920–1921 have been unable to explain how the recovery could have been so swift and sweeping even though the federal government and the Federal Reserve refrained from employing any of the macroeconomic tools — public works spending, government deficits, and inflationary monetary policy — that Keynesian wisdom recommends as the solution to economic slowdowns.
.