Forward Kentucky: Comparing Kevin McCarthy to ‘Silent Cal’ Coolidge – really?
Maybe comparing McCarthy to Calvin Coolidge – whose policies led to the Great Depression – isn’t the best idea.
By BERRY CRAIG
Calvin Coolidge went down in history as one of the country’s worst presidents because his only-rich-guys matter economic policies helped bring on the Great Depression. But he got a shout-out Thursday when Republican Rep. J. French Hill of Arkansas joined the parade of GOP lawmakers who rose to nominate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for speaker.
More on that in a minute.
“The chief business of the American people is business," Coolidge said. He believed the government should stay out of business. In the end, he, and 1920s Presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover, and GOP congresses gave Americans the business in the worst economic catastrophe in our history. (Harding and Hoover are also cellar-dwellers in presidential rankings.)