In the midst of this tumultuous and frightening election year, it’s worth looking back a century to the election of 1924, handily won by Calvin Coolidge. His pledge was not more government interference in our lives, but much less. In downsizing the federal government, he continued what President Harding had begun. The budget went down, as did the national debt. People and resources were freed for productive use and the consequence was the Roaring Twenties.
In this AIER article, Luis Carlos Araujo Quintero writes about Coolidge and his philosophy of government.
He reduced taxes across the board, incentivizing productive economic activities that allowed free and enriching exchange. Coolidge challenged a tax system designed to finance America’s intervention in World War I, fostering private American entrepreneurship and saving instead. This new economic boom did not have to navigate a complex federal regulatory regime, given that this president kept the federal government largely away from free enterprise. In fact, he reduced the federal budget consistently between 1923 and 1929.
Many Americans now believe that it’s impossible to turn the clock back and lessen the federal drag on the economy. In view of the success of Javier Milei in Argentina, that notion should be discarded. What we desperately need is someone who can cogently explain the benefits of freedom and the damage that is done by our gigantic federal leviathan.
Quintero concludes,
As both parties prepare to officially select their candidates at conventions this summer, the centennial of Calvin Coolidge’s only presidential election in 1924 should serve to remind Americans that less federal government and better state and local government is the governance formula behind this country’s political success. When it means restraining big and bad government, silence really can be golden.