> For these reasons, Jimmy Carter is my third-favorite president of the 20th century, behind my favorite, Calvin Coolidge, and my second-favorite, Dwight Eisenhower.
Aside from Amity Shlaes, who seems to have worked backwards from her desired conclusion, I've never heard an argument put forward for Coolidge as among the great presidents. What do you particularly admire?
Not to put Coolidge on a pedestal but I’m not sure I understand the vitriol historians have towards the man. Most of the hate is pointed at claiming he “set the stage for the Depression” but that’s a pretty bold assertion.
The Depression was a global affair, larger than one president’s actions, and most of his policies were fairly conventional for his day. He had left office over 6 months before the depression began (and over 2 years before the banking crises that caused most of the misery really kicked in). Since pretty much every leader (including FDR and Hitler) had to figure out how to solve the crises in office using unconventional policies (the then new-fangled Keynesian economic policy), it’s a bit unfair to blame the guy when he wasn’t even in power.
I don't know enough about Coolidge to have my opinion be worth much here, and of course it's always fair to argue whether any win or loss during or after a president's term should be attributed to them, their predecessors, or (in the last case) their successors, but there's a lot of ground between "not really responsible for the Depression" and "the greatest president!" I would have been less surprised by the first claim, but it seemed like linguae was making the second.
