Gilbert, a political scientist at Northeastern University.īut in June 1924, after he clinched the Republican nomination but before he was elected to his first and only full term, Coolidge lost his beloved younger son, Calvin Jr., to sepsis from a blister the 16-year-old got playing tennis on the White House lawn. To his admirers, like Reagan and the business site CheckWriters, this shows that Coolidge "was no micromanager," and his famous habit of "empowering his Cabinet officials" meant his "Roaring '20s White House was never bogged down by process" and therefore "functioned like a well-oiled Model T Ford." And that was probably true in his first two years, when he vigorously worked to clean up Harding's scandals and wowed the press with his knowledge and engagement - reporters gave him a standing ovation after his first presidential press conference, says Robert E. To handle international issues, Coolidge looked to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, and his secretaries of state." "Coolidge himself was not versed or deeply interested in world affairs. "Silent Cal" Coolidge was a business-friendly, tax-cutting, anti-regulation conservative perhaps most famous for his quote, "The chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge favored "a hands-off leadership style and a restrained view of the executive, delegating tasks to his Cabinet, leaving most issues to the states to resolve," says David Greenberg at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. Harding, whom Goldman described as "more interested in his mistresses then management - as subsequent scandals showed."īut the first president we'll look at is Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, who took over when Harding died suddenly in 1923 and won his own term a year later. There are several presidents who resonate in some way with Trump, from big-picture America booster Ronald Reagan to Gerald Ford, the never-elected president who entered office due to happenstance and was, as Paul Goldman says, "eventually seen by many as not merely a hands-off delegator, but as an over-his-head figurehead who needed Kissinger and others to keep him from making mistakes." Depending on how things shake out, he could end up like Warren G. So what happens if Trump does end up being what Scott Galupo calls "the president of pomp," acting as a rubber stamp for policy he's farmed out to Pence and the GOP leaders in Congress? Instead of trying to peer into the future, let's look at what happened when past "hands-off" presidents led the country. In fact, this has been a consistent partisan pattern since Woodrow Wilson, says Paul Goldman at the Richmond Times-Dispatch: Democrats employing a "detailer-in-chief presidential management model," and Republicans relying on a "delegator-in-chief formula." But there's a decent chance Trump will make Bush look like a policy wonk and a helicopter president. Bush, for example, ceded an unusually large amount of policymaking and power to his vice president, Dick Cheney, and other subordinates - think "Heckuva Job Brownie" and Hurricane Katrina - while his predecessor, Bill Clinton was less likely to think of himself as delegator-in-chief and much more prone to immersing himself in policy and the politics of governing. There is some precedent for treating the presidency like the chairman of the board instead of chief executive of the enterprise.
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