“Today we estimate that the highest level of unemployment under President Coolidge had been 5 percent in the year he was elected. From there it dropped to 3.2 percent in 1925 and then into the twos and ones.”

– Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man

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President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican lawyer from Vermont, was a minimalist president who believed in the power of the free market and the benefit of limited government.

On tax policy, Coolidge believed in lower taxes and fewer tax payers. He worked to reduce the size of the federal government and the amount of debt carried by the same.

Coolidge also understood the role of the president. His job is not to run the lives of the people. Indeed:

Calvin Coolidge, a genuinely humble man and a fine president, wrote in his autobiography that it was “a major source of safety to the country” for the president “to know that he is not a great man.”

He worked towards balanced budgets and fought for lower taxes. He believed in limited government and didn’t believe in Washington controlling the lives of the people. He was a proponent of the free market and a limited government conservative.

Now go re-read that opening quote, keeping in mind that our national unemployment rate currently stands at 9.5% with both the White House and Congress controlled by big government, high-spending liberal Democrats. Consider the future.