THE PRESIDENCY: Cal and the New Conservatism

Cal and the New Conservatism

Calvin Coolidge, the champion of small spending and small Government, is the warmed-over toast of Washington's summer season. At dinner parties, his pithy sayings ("The business of America is business") are served up as wisdom for this time. Around July 4, television and newspaper commentators noted rather affectionately that it was Cal's birthday (1872) and we might well take a lesson from his penny-pinching. That is quite a comeback for a man whose previous pinnacle of acclaim came when Writer Dorothy Parker, on being told he was dead, asked: "How can they tell?"

What brings Coolidge...

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