Staff Writer

To be as cool a president as he was a candidate, Barack Obama should strive to emulate the coolest president this country ever had - Calvin Coolidge.

While the Left would say that Coolidge was anything but cool, his record as president proves otherwise. Though known as “Silent Cal” for his disinterest in small talk, Coolidge was an effective public speaker whose words reveal a keen understanding of human nature in general and the character of the American people in particular.

In a Jan. 25, 1925 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Coolidge offered the best summation of the American character when he said “It is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”

This view of America as an essentially commercial republic whose citizens are interested in getting ahead and doing well has deep roots in American history. It helped shape Coolidge's belief that the wealth created by the American people belonged to them and not the federal government. Coolidge believed that taxes should be as low as possible paid by as few people as possible and, unlike so many of today's politicians who pay only lip service to tax reduction, he acted on his beliefs.

As governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge signed into law legislation that kept tax rates the same while cutting spending by $4 million and using the savings to pay off some of the state's debt. As president, he signed the Revenue Act of 1924 which reduced income tax rates.

Throughout his term in office, Coolidge would continue to work to reduce taxes and - this is another area where he parts company with most of today's politicians including Obama - also sought to reduce federal spending and use the savings to pay off the national debt. Both as governor and as president, Coolidge repeatedly wielded the veto pen to reject spending he felt wasteful and unwise. In Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have raised legislators' salaries by 50 percent.

As president, he repeatedly vetoed the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Act which would have allowed the federal government to purchase agricultural surpluses and sell them abroad at reduced prices. In vetoing the bill, Coolidge said agriculture must stand "on an independent business basis," and that “government control cannot be divorced from political control.” He instead favored Herbert Hoover's proposal to make agriculture profitable through modernization instead of price manipulation.

The son of a Vermont farmer, Coolidge put his opposition to such policies even more bluntly when he said that “farmers never have made much money. I do not believe we can do much about it.”

His veto of McNary-Haugen and his assessment of the economic plight of the farmer is further evidence - as if any were needed - that Coolidge rejected the idea that government could create wealth or should be in the business of trying to create it through utopian redistribution schemes. This is where Obama should really pay attention to Coolidge because, his denials to Joe the Plumber notwithstanding, Obama and most politicians of both major parties, believes government is a source of wealth creation, either through increased spending - which means increased debt - and/or through redistributionist tax schemes that destroy incentive and lead to less prosperity.

If Obama wants to be a really cool - and successful - president then he should follow the example of Coolidge and reduce both taxes and spending and use the money saved to start paying off this country's massive debt. The country would benefit from such fiscal sanity and so would Obama who four years from now would be able to successfully urge the American people to “Keep Cool With Barry.”