More than anything else, Calvin Coolidge brought a unique style to the White House. Although known for his public discomfort with chitchat and for his philosophical dislike of excessive leadership, Coolidge was a highly visible leader. For example, during his sixty-seven months as President, he held 520 press conferences, or an average of nearly eight each month. He spoke on the radio at least monthly to national audiences. Coolidge enjoyed having himself photographed in full Indian headdress, cowboy chaps and hat, farmer overalls, and other outlandish dress. He liked to make people laugh, and he used his dry, lean wit to punctuate his silence with pithy slogans. In formal addresses, he changed tactics -- delivering carefully crafted sermons and staging them as serious and dignified events.


A Providential Presidency

His daily routine consisted of hard work and long afternoon naps. Coolidge had a somber resignation towards life that is best summarized as a go-along-and-avoid-trouble type of management style. He believed that he was in the "clutch of forces" far greater than himself despite being "the most powerful man in the world." He believed that human action was of little consequence in the long run because Providence had its own plan for everyone. This was a kind of passive-negative belief in predestination (that all events have been willed by God), a reflection of his New England Congregationalist religious roots. "Let well enough alone," was his motto for action. This sense of inevitability found him willing to delegate authority, to step back from confrontation, and to avoid taking much advice. He once complained of his secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover -- the "wonder boy" who would succeed him as President: "That man has offered me unsolicited advice every day for six years, all of it bad." Hoover wanted the government to be active and progressive but Coolidge's approach was to wait for situations to resolve themselves and only act when absolutely necessary.

In line with his "let's avoid trouble" style of presidential leadership, Coolidge kept all of Harding's cabinet, including scandal-plagued Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty -- although Coolidge finally fired him when Daugherty refused to open Justice Department files to congressional investigators. On the legislative front, Coolidge went along with the Immigration Act of 1924, which reduced the number of eastern and southern Europeans allowed into America and excluded the Japanese altogether. He also supported the Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926, initiated by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, the wealthy Pittsburgh banker who favored tax cuts for the rich. These acts sharply reduced income and inheritance taxes, as well as the gift and excise taxes imposed during World War I. Historians critical of Coolidge contend that these laws freed up private funds that fueled the wild speculation that led to the stock market crash of 1929.

On two issues, Coolidge's sense of strict economy found him dead-set against two important Republican constituencies: (1) the Veterans Bonus Act of 1924, which awarded World War I veterans paid-up insurance policies that were redeemable in twenty years, and (2) various farm relief laws that were passed by Congress in 1927 and 1928. The Bonus bill was passed over the President's veto, but he managed to kill farm relief. Again, historians critical of Coolidge suggest that the farm relief bills, which would have established a government corporation to buy surplus crops at artificially set prices (to be held or sold abroad when market prices rose), would have shored up the depressed farm economy and possibly prevented the Great Depression that engulfed the nation in the 1930s.