Calvin Coolidge was very much a product of his environment. The boy reared on the farm at the Notch in Plymouth, Vermont, was weaned on the Puritan ethic of selfless hard work. The man known as “Silent Cal” let his work speak for him, keeping conversation at a minimum. He was an unremarkable youth who stayed true to the righteous elements of his upbringing and education to appeal to his fellow citizens in a way that ultimately elevated him from the bottom of the political ladder to its very pinnacle. Coolidge was hardly a natural politician, but he offered a no-nonsense, trustworthy persona during an era when the American electorate was looking for someone on whom it could rely.
In some ways, Coolidge was often in the right place at the right time – circumstances which some have simply called the “Coolidge Luck.” But Calvin Coolidge made his own luck by proactively seeking one political opportunity after another, learning intently at each step of the way, and creating his own opportunities from these pursuits. And at crucial moments, he acted, whether that meant locking up the position of President of the State Senate in Massachusetts before anyone else could jump into the race in 1913 or taking charge of the Boston Police Strike as the state’s Governor in 1919. In the latter case, Coolidge captured the nation’s attention when he stood for principle, stood for community, and stood for law and order when he boldly declared, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” That statement propelled Coolidge to the Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States and eventually the presidency itself.
In his five and a half years in the Oval Office, Coolidge was laser focused on putting his own stamp on the agenda he inherited from Warren Harding, which was built to improve the nation’s post-war economy. By every conceivable measure, he was successful. Coolidge’s combination of tax cuts, protective tariffs, and dramatic curtailment of government expenditures, paired with a leap in technological innovation, raised the American economy to heights it had never seen before. The Roaring Twenties brought prosperity and joy throughout the land, overseen by the quiet, steadfast leadership of the nation’s 30th President. Of course, the rise was unsustainable and came crashing down just a few months after Coolidge left the White House in the form of the worst economic depression the nation had ever seen. How much credit and blame Coolidge gets for these phenomena can still be debated, as informed by the story of his remarkable rise to the highest office his nation has to bestow.