I mean do you read about him today i guess the first question id ask could he be elected president today . I think so. Thats really the challenge of the book, whether we can choose someone who is as principled as he is as president. He did not believe coolidge who was president from 23 to 29 that perception is reality which he thought principle is reality. The challenge for us is we just have to have someone who is good looking and speaks well and good salesman or someone who has good principles. I think we can. We deceive ourselves we need looks alone. Who did he put around himself . Very important question. Coolidge came into office from being Vice President. Unfortunately, the president died so there is a cabinet there and some of them are compromised. We remember harding was a period of scandal so do you keep them. And the modern position might be clean sweep, right . Get them out so you will have the appearance of integrity. But coolidge also prized respect for harding. Those people werent condemned yet, innocent until Proven Guilty and continuity for the people in market. So he kept the cabinet for a while. Eventually some people left. The secretary of the interior left. Coolidge did have an investigation, he named a Bipartisan Team to look into corruption in the harding administration. But he thought first of continuity when he became president in august of 1923. Who was the secretary of the treasury . That would be Andrew Mellon who was his and hardings before him and after. He is like bernanke though he was treasury secretary, it was said that three president s served under him. How did that relate to the mellon name that we know now, the mellon bank. Mellon was a very wealthy man which he made much of his money which he created an empire in pittsburgh in steel alum numb. Alum. He was also what we might call a venture capitalist. He would give a man money if a man had a good idea, see what happened, maybe in the end sell his share. Sometimes he butted in, sometimes he didnt. But he loved new ideas which he created a whole new institute to generate patents. He was not just someone who bought what people had and held on it to. He was a creator of wealth. So mellon came to this job, the job of treasury secretary with a wealth of experience and a few convictions. And his best partner among the president s was coolidge who understood mellon. One thing we have to admire about coolidge is he understood how to work with other men. He died at age 60, right after he got out of the presidency. What happened . What was his wealth like . A lot of them did. We are blessed with the angiogram or blessed with men now know exactly how well their heart is doing. And its clear he had something card owe going on. Hardcore going on. You see men dying in the politics and especially in the politics. Harding died from coolidge said harding was tired out, wilson had that terrible stroke and never recovered. So the two proceedings president s had been killed. Coolidge was proud he made it. I dont think he was aware to the extent how bad his heart was, that something was really wrong. We have video of coolidge at the white house. May have been the first video of the president speaking. Lets watch. I want the people of america to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition under which the earnings of the people can be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer a very severe and distinct curtailment of our liberty. Again, forget the principles that he had, but no tell prompter, reading off of a piece of paper, somewhat halting high voice. Do you think he could make it in the Television Age . I do. They wondered that about him then. Of course, the new technology then was radio and it turned out radio was a blessing for him because he had a little bit of wire in his voice and it cut through apparently a very good radio voice. He thought he was on radio there and he read as though on the radio and his personality comes through. The chapter they thought was most illuminating about him as a person and im not sure you pronounce it this way, the ode den, what is that chapter what is that chapter . This is when you get to college, the outsider thats greek. He happened to go to a college that had a motto let them illuminate the earth. A college for future ministers, generally congregationist although there were others there. And he went down there and at the time it was a greek school. Ed the a lot of fraternities and most kids were in them. It had a lot of fraternities and most kids were in them. And what is interesting about calvin, and this is all the way through his life, he didnt seem like he was going to make it. He got there and thought he should be in one, he wrote his letter saying something about that and then he wasnt chosen. So imagine being in a very greek school with boys richer than you and being kind of shy and he wasnt chosen. I think he wasnt sure he wanted to be chosen and give up that much of himself to a group. But its always nice to be asked and he was quite disappointed when he wasnt asked. And there is an interesting story there. There was another boy there at the who was actually poorer than calvin, maybe shorter and had a little fiscal disability. But he was a happy boy and much loved and went into a fraternity and coolidge knew him. And apparently he black balled coolidge at one point for a fraternity, when coolidge was going to come in he said ill take him not the other one. He was one of those friends who thinks it over and changes his mind. He decided he had underrated calvin. And that was dwight marrow who went to law school and became a big partner at j. P. Morgan when j. P. Morgan, morgan was down. He liked underdogs and calvin sent dwight to patch it up with mexico. It was a terriblet ime. Terrible time. Dwight was the representative. And he had a daughter named ann morrow. He went down to cheer up the mexicans to bring comedy to the place. Thats how ann morrow lynnburg became. It is a sad beginning of undergraduate life for Calvin Coolidge. When you read about him and his personality, it defies logic this man could end up president of the united states. Because hes a silent cow, how silent was he . He was very silent. There was a famous story a lady said maybe i can get you to say two words at this dinner and he said you lose. That was Dorothy Parker . I dont think so. Dorothy parker said when he died, who could tell . A very mean comment. And i want to say if you go back and look at coolidge he was a conservative hero and his tax rate was a Gold Standard tax rate, 25 was what he got the top rate down to and he fought like crazy. It started with wilson in the 1970s. When you look at what the social lights said about coolidge in washington, how cold he was. He wouldnt meet with them. They were from families that endorsed different policies. Especially roosevelt, he was a lets get them go bully. And here was coolidge, prissy and cold and not giving out favorites. So he looked as though he had been weaned on a pickle. He was from new england. Farmers dont talk a lot or waive their arms about because a cow might kick them. And it was temp mental of temperament. He was a shy person. Butted the a political person. He knew if he didnt talk a lot people would stop talking. And a political leader is bombarded with questions. And his silence was his way of not giving in to special interest. Go back again to the college experience. You say he learned to like to speak. How did that come in and did he ever get in a fraternity . He got in a fraternity at the end, very end of senior year and it was a new one on campus. And he was proud. He wrote a letter to his father. The letters are beautiful. They were published and they are hard to find. I hope we can publish them again. He wrote his father. His father wasnt rich but wasnt totally poor. An important person in his town. I need the cane, i need the overcoat but it was very late, last term basically senior year that coolidge got in. I think his classmates recognized something in him when he started to speak. He was thoughtful and we want to say this is interesting about their education. There was rhetoric in education so they had to speak a lot. And the teacher he loved very much, charles gar minute a lot lot. Rmond a dwight liked him. He began to have friends and had friends in this particular lecture and seminar and he spoke in class and the other boys said wait a minute, its a new man, we didnt recognize him. How come we didnt know you. We messed up. In that wonderful way you can reevaluate someone in a classroom. I have a picture i want to show that you is not in your book. This is a picture from the courthouse yard in New Hampshire where he lived. Its on the screen there and this has every job hes ever had on that statute. Have you ever seen that . I dont think so. I want to read you so we can go back and talk about that because i want to know why you think he got all this. He was born in vermont 1872 and admitted to massachusetts bar in 1957, 1898 city counselor, city solicitor. Mayor of the city of north hampton. 1911. State senator, 1913. President of massachusetts senate. 1915 to 1917 governor of the state of massachusetts. And went on to be Vice President in 1921 and president in 1923. Ive never seen anything like that where somebody had that many jobs leading up to president. And he almost never lost. How did he do it . He told one running for politics is my hobby. One was the Republican Party and Democratic Party were different. If you helped the others, they helped you. He was in the party. It was a club. It wasnt to be entirely looked down upon the way we learn in school. He climbed the greasy pole of massachusetts politics. It wasnt just that. There is some good in the party. They train you and help you work efficiently. But its also his incredible personal perseverance and thats what i try to get at in the chapter about his time in New Hampshire mass. That was the county seat. After college he looked around and couldnt afford lawsuit. Kind of bugged his father about it. Couldnt afford it so he went to read the law. You could clerk and pass the bar that way with a firm of two men who liked him and had been two important lawyers in the town. And he learned about his county seat. Why dont i try this . Where his friend went to law school and important wall street Bank Law Firm and then a bank. So this was the old, the thomas the old way, the Thomas Jefferson kind of way. Dont with be a city doll. Thats one of the things they read in college. And he was good to the party, the party was good to him. He practiced law on and off the whole time. He was very careful not to be corrupt. One of the issues of his youth and remember his youth is the progressive Republican Party so hes looking and you can see a press i have record in coolidge record in coolidge whether hes a state lawmaker or busing trust in theaters. In that rare was roosevelt so hes thinking is this a good policy or not, hate the big, reform government and clean it up. He liked that part and he had to work in it. He was often assigned to clean up government, to shut down offices. But hes evaluating this whole time. I want to mention he had a mentor who was silent. I didnt know this until i began to research in massachusetts where much of his material is. That was called w. Murray crane. He was a senator who helped t. R. With coal strikes. He was of the crane paper company, so he was a business man and the crane paper company, we used to call printed the dollar. So in a very interesting way crane knew about the u. S. Economy through the dollar, through how much he printed. And crane too was silent, rarely spoke. He was the western massachusetts leader versus the boston lead er in massachusetts politics and that was coolidges mentor. How much of the crash of 1929 could be blamed on coolidge . He left in march of 1929. So you imagine the stock market we look at this where i teach. The stock market was 100 for a long time. Then it went up 200, very high and coolidge saw a lot of recessions. That doubled. That is like our 90s. Then it went to 381 that would be september 1929. Coolidge didnt approve of that. He had seen a lot of recessions. He knew every everything in him knew that was wrong. He didnt believe it was the job of the executive to intervene. It was the order of the wall street journal. He knew the owner of the wall street journal. But he didnt think the president was in charge of that. The fed was also young. He looked into it. There is a record of him looking into it. Charles merrill who founded Merrill Lynch and he went to see him and they talked about it and coolidge was terrified because he was so conservative and he knew what a crash was. But he didnt site as a see it as the president s role and negotiate neither did merrill. That would be a state authority. Another factor in that period was what fed policy was and we know the great fed leader died. I do not blame this on coolidge in the least. And one of the important factors you always want to look at is it was growth in the 1920s real . Was it all champagne and a lie . The 1920s growth was real. Most of it was real. The stock market went too high but it was not a lie of a decade. That is something we learned in school and this is an effort to do that revision. 1920s. E the true when did you first become interested in Calvin Coolidge . In forgotten man, the history of the 1930s is about how government came in starting with hoover and messed it up, messed up something good. Beyond all the things, bigger government was hoover and roosevelt followed with even bigger. So i thought what was it they messed up. And i had to go back and write a new beginning and show what it was that was lost in order to show the extent of the loss. And i thought this is very interesting. The economics of the 1920s, we dont discuss them that much. We think they were a lie. Prohibition. People untruth. Economist toned say that growth is interesting and real, most of it. And we talk about for example r. C. A. Was described in some of the book the crash of the stock is a big lie, just a bubble. But they had an interesting invention on its mind what we would now call television that did turn out to be profitable much later. We look in economics, sometimes markets over shoot when they were anticipating gains. The markets of the 1920s were really interesting. Look at it from the point of view, the government the single thing that coolidge did is when he left office, the budget was lower than when he came in. Thats the story for us now. How did he do that . The economy grew a lot. Maybe more than 2 sometimes. Unemployment was below 5 , the budget was balanced. How did he manage though to make the budget go lower and how did that help the economy . A lot because he got the government out of the way of the economy. Very foreign to the way we talk about the economy now. Do you remember how big the budget was then . Well, the number it depends on how you count it but the way he counted it was about 3. 3 billion. He was going to get it down to 3 billion and that was his holy grail and the reason this book is so long is the middle section of the book is about his effort with another new englander who was general lord from main to cut the budget. They didnt just cut the tax rates. They duty budget. They cut the budget. And this is different from our modern supply siders who tend to put the tax rates first. Youll see a photo of two lion cubs he had. Someone gave him two cubs. He said you cant just cut taxes, you have to cut budget and those lion cubs were made Budget Bureau and tax reduction. Where did they reside . In the zoo. He loved animals, but they sent a lot of them to the zoo pretty soon. Lets go back to the amity shlaes story. Where did you grow up . Im from chicago. Where did you go to college . I went to jail college. Yale college. When you first came to us in 1990 or so, you appeared on this network, you were back from germany. How long did you spend there . I spent a few years in germany. I had a fellowship after college. I got to do some journalism then joined the wall street journal. Im interested in germany now too. Im interested in east europe and the future of democracy and freedom there and all that theyve achieved and what happened. So my first work was on germany because i had studied germany and wrote a book about germany. The empire and germ mans and the german conception around the time of german unification. I want to show you yourself in 1993, 20 years ago, here you are. I think the country will do just fine. Right now people say that it will be a big curve after reunification because of all the troubles that they have and i think they are going to be at the bottom of the curve this year. And within five, maybe ten years germany will so consolidated and it will be a stronger country for the reunification. But they are going through a true recession now. How did you do then . They did fine. They did better than we thought. Wondering if germany will come out of the euro. Germany is setting the model for future economy. Germany is being like Calvin Coolidge because its the saver country of europe. Can they save grease and help the spenders . Speave greece and help the nders . From that time your life has changed dramatically. You dedicate this book to who . My four children. My four children with my husband seth, journalist and editor. Our oldest son goes to university of texas. Our second son at west point. We have a daughter who is in high school and helen is in 6th grade. Youve been fairly visible working . Thats right. Im a columnist. Where do you write . I write for bloomberg. How often . Its a regular column. Id say less regular now because of various bumps. But ive been a columnist for ten years. Before that, it was the financial times. Council on foreign relations, are you still with them . No. I was a fellow in economic history for years and ive recently moved over to a new foundation, president bush 43s foundation which is going to be wonderful. Im interested in president ial history. President bush is a wonderful leader with an enormous archive attached in dallas. So i like to research. I like coolidges history and want to help it. I wanted to learn at a president ial center and work in economics. Im in a program called the 4 Growth Program which is about economic growth. Coolidge had it, whats that mystery, what was it. And the project looks at different ways to get stronger growth. We know that makes everything easier including the entitl