President Obama's grandstanding Jobs Speech last week underscores once again the repeated failure of this chief executive to spur the economy out of its current doldrums.
Rather than looking to President Ronald Reagan for the proper model of leadership to get us out of this mess, the Republican Party and the nation ought to heed to quotable President Calvin Coolidge, a oft-overlooked executive who presided over one of the strongest periods of economic growth in the Nation.
In evaluating the elitist, statist, activist trend of the current administration, President Coolidge probably would have remarked ""When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions."
From the outset of Obama’s tenure as chief executive, vanity has clouded his judgment and has frustrated the very political and economic systems he has been attempting to harness. World leaders love him, yet ignore him. His policies have alienated constituents all over the country, even in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and New Jersey. Yet through it all, Obama has clamored to the public forum, convinced that if he could only articulate his vision more clearly, if he could only make his mission manifest to the small minds of the American People. . .
Obama has evinced this spirit of betrayal condemned by Coolidge in a number of ways, from the outrageous horde of unaccountable bureaucratic appointments, to the legislative shenanigans and backroom deals that thrust "Obamacare" on an unwilling public, to the extensive bailouts to irresponsible lenders and financial firms, to the fiat corporate take-over of General Motors. Obama has never hesitated to marginalize Congress, the Constitution, and even his constituents to further his Progressive paradise of Big Government as Big Brother, Broker, and Bondsman.
So, the 30th President would have no trouble pinpointing the major source of failure and dysfunction in the 44th President’s approach to executive leadership. Yet what can we as voters learn from Coolidge about prospering prosperity in a country fed up with merely hope and change?
How did he do it: how did President Coolidge help turn a near-moribund economy, following a horrendous world war, into a prosperous one? He didn’t! He got out of the way. Columnist Walter Lippmann opined that Coolidge's genius lay in “effectively doing nothing”.
"The business of America is business," Coolidge is often quoted saying. It is not the government's job to create jobs, but to allow a free market economy to spur recovery, prosperity, and innovation.
"The people cannot look to legislation generally for success."
Obamacare, the proliferation of regulatory agencies, czar-appointments unaccountable to Congress, stimulus spending, extension of unemployment benefits: none of these public hand-outs and shovel-ready projects have stirred the economy from its anemic stupor. Coolidge vetoed handouts to suffering farmers, yet the economy still flourished.
"Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support."
Coolidge never dismissed the role of government or private assistance for the needy. Alarmingly, though, the number of needy, dependent, and dispossessed grows precipitously in the wake of ballooning entitlements, shrinking sources of revenue, and impending budget shortfalls. Rather than aiding and abetting the growing constituency of dependents, the United States needs an executive who will foster a steady weaning from the public teat, reinforcing the value of “self-government” as “self-support.”
"If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves."
No social security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no welfare-warfare state siphoning away non-existent federal reserves. Not depending on one’s neighbor, however rich he may be, to bail you out when times are tough. Not expecting the government to provide for every worker who would rather hold out his hand for alms instead of put his hand to the wheel and work. Rather than looking to the government to solve our problems, which it has failed to do in spite of all the political, social, and economic interventions conjured about by the political class, the American people need to focus on their local needs, trust to their individual efforts, and effect purpose in their own communities.
"Don't you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?"
If the Obama Administration stopped: stopped spending, stopped regulating, stopped managing and controlling, adjusting, crediting, adding, subtracting, debating, deliberating, and changing the ground rules of business administration in this country, businesses would be far less reluctant to hire; workers would expect more work, and export more from their work in their take-home their pay, investments, and savings. The panic-induced rush by the Beltway bureaucracy, from medical mandates to short-term tax cuts, to billowing red-tape, all foster a deadly atmosphere of uncertainty, the very bally-hoo that frustrates investment, stalls industrial growth, and puts off economic recovery.
"This country would not be a land of opportunity, America could not be America, if the people were shackled with government monopolies." From General Motors to global banking firms to Wall Street, Obama has encroached into the free market, diminishing the alacrity of trade at the expense of wasted investment in green technologies and flighty distribution of wealth, which only spreads unemployment and poverty.
Aside from his laissez-faire approach to governing the United States while in Office, President Coolidge was well-known for frequent photo-ops and few public speeches. “Silent Cal” once beat a journalist in a bet, when the commentator attempted to get more than two words out of him. “You lose,” Coolidge calmly replied.
Would that President Obama possessed like laconism instead of the left-wing loquacity with which he has lambasted this nation, including the recent Jobs Speech.