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The Forgotten President

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I was wondering where all this love for Coolidge came from.  Seems like Amity Shlaes has been busy recasting Coolidge as the paragon of fiscal conservatism.  Here she is plugging her previous book on The Great Depression, downplaying FDR, and playing up Hoover.

Glenn Beck not so long ago came out with a book Cowards, where he took progressives to task, including Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.  Instead, he chose to cite the courage of Harding and Coolidge.  You can read the introduction here, if your stomach can bear it.

We really do have an attempt taking place to rewrite the narrative of the 20th century.

Comments

  1. avrdsOctober 8, 2012 at 5:42 PM

    Interesting blurb from your link:

    Coolidge is a welcome new biography of a great American president. Amity Shlaes shines fresh light on a leader of humble persistence who unexpectedly found himself in the presidency and whose faith in the American people helped restore American prosperity during a period of great turmoil. Amidst today's economic hardships and an uncertain future, Shlaes illuminates a path forward - making Coolidge a must-read for policymakers and citizens alike." -- Paul Ryan.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 8, 2012 at 7:27 PM

    Yea, pretty much says it all. Why anyone would idolize Silent Cal is beyond me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JAbelOctober 9, 2012 at 9:55 AM

    i just want to see if i can post under my own name again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonOctober 9, 2012 at 10:10 AM

    Success! We've gotten a few spams lately, so I will probably put a filter on the forum. I keep hoping Robert pitches up at some point, and don't want to block him out.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsOctober 9, 2012 at 3:43 PM

    Welcome back Bo. Lots of anons floating around, and it's always hard to know if it's a "real" one or not. Like that Chinese spammer I deleted.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JAbelOctober 10, 2012 at 4:27 AM

    I started running google chrome in addition to explorer and google finally accepted a password change.Each time I tried it before on Explorer Google kept telling me my password was invalid no matter changing it like 5 times.

    ReplyDelete
  7. James FergusonOctober 10, 2012 at 7:17 AM

    Welcome to the world of Chrome, bo.

    It is worth reading the intro to Cowards only because it helps to define what right wing conservatives think and how they are trying to redefine the Republican Party (and in turn the nation) by denigrating past Republicans who had progressive leanings like TR. But, Beck's criticisms don't stop there, he also takes Eisenhower to task through the guise of Goldwater, calling his progressive "streak" a "Dime Store New Deal." In Beck's addled mind, the only true conservatives the past century were Harding, Coolidge, Goldwater and Reagan.

    Books, like those of Shlaes, help legitimize this conservative view, as they are packaged in the form of "history."

    ReplyDelete
  8. James FergusonOctober 10, 2012 at 7:20 AM

    It also give you a sense how WEB DuBois must have felt reading all those books coming out of the Dunning School, which defined what many Americans felt about post-Civil-War America.

    Now, as Foner wrote in "Who Owns History?" we have a similar "intellectual" redemption taking place in the post-Civil-Rights era.

    ReplyDelete
  9. avrdsOctober 10, 2012 at 3:14 PM

    Scary.

    ReplyDelete

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