Well, here’s a scary headline from the Washington Post:



White House Pursues Ways to Boost Economy


Unfortunately, the administration has come up with more of just the kind of job-killing ideas that made the recession Mr. Obama famously inherited worse. There will be new investments in clean energy, for example, and tax breaks for companies that use renewable energy, including wind power.


And you thought Don Quixote tilted at windmills! These ideas are ideology, not policies that will improve the economy, at work. Mr. Obama keeps going down the wrong road, learning nothing as he drives into one disaster after another.


The American president who got the country out of a recession was Calvin Coolidge, who is not likely to be a role model for Mr. Obama, who’s been hailed as the new Lincoln and the new FDR. It would be better for the country if he were the new “Silent Cal” (and a spell of silence from Mr. Obama would certainly be golden along about now).


As for Coolidge, Charles C. Johnson, who is writing a book about him, notes:



Eighty-eight years ago this week, Calvin Coolidge took office upon the sudden death of President Warren Harding. Like the current administration, the Harding-Coolidge administration faced a tough recession from 1919-1921. But unlike the current administration, the Harding-Coolidge and Coolidge-Dawes administrations cut taxes, balanced budgets and slashed government spending, reducing federal debt by over a third in a decade.



The economy grew, averaging just over 7% from 1924 to 1929, the years of his presidency. So did Coolidge’s popularity. He was so popular that even during the Great Depression’s height song-writer Cole Porter compared his lover to the “Coolidge dollar.”



Ronald Reagan, who grew up during the Coolidge presidency, admired “Silent Cal,” even going so far as to read a biography of the 30th president as he recovered from a surgery in 1985 and to praise him in letters to his constituents. To Reagan, Coolidge wasn’t silent, but was silenced by New Deal supporters, whose intellectual heirs control much of Washington today.


Coolidge knew that the best thing government could do was lower taxes and get out of the way. He had one advantage those who want to slash budgets today budget don’t have: Coolidge wasn’t confronted by a huge number of people who are dependent on government.


The root of our financial problem is government dependence.