Amity Shlaes: Why Calvin Coolidge Is Back in Style

A healthy throng of mostly young readers greeted Coolidge author Amity Shlaes at a CPAC book signing yesterday, eager to hear her thoughts on a president she dubbed The Great Refrainer.

President Calvin Coolidge is suddenly chic among some conservatives for his smaller government legacy, but Shlaes cautions Breitbart News that the leader’s re-emergence as an influential figure comes with an asterisk.

“It’s currently a tough sell with the stock market so high,” Shlaes says of Coolidge’s economic principles. As the entitlement problem grows more ferocious, though, the American public will hunger for a leader with an “accurate assessment” of the situation, someone echoing Coolidge’s measured approach. Voters will seek out someone who “cares about data and the truth,” she says.

Shlaes took a mixed review of "Coolidge" from The New York Times in full stride, and she was more than eager to talk about why Coolidge endures.

“He was like a good airport. He did what he said he would do … he was a brand you trust,” she says.

Shlaes shares her thoughts on Coolidge and why he matters now in the newest course offered at Prager University.

"He got the kind of results men of action long for today ... economic results," Shlaes says in the course.  


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“Every Asian market outside Sri Lanka retreated after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday said a premature withdrawal of quantitative easing would put the U.S. economic recovery at risk,” Jonathan Burgos reports. What does this say about the US and, in particular, the policies of the Federal Open Market Committee, which are pretty much identical?

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