{"id":45101,"date":"2018-09-28T05:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T09:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45101"},"modified":"2018-09-27T16:48:28","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T20:48:28","slug":"the-staunch-progressive-dismissal-of-warren-harding-and-calvin-coolidge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/09\/28\/the-staunch-progressive-dismissal-of-warren-harding-and-calvin-coolidge\/","title":{"rendered":"The staunch Progressive dismissal of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Richard Epstein’s review<\/a> of Jill Lepore\u2019s recent book These Truths: A History of the United States<\/em>, there’s some interesting discussion of the Harding and Coolidge administrations:<\/p>\n

Lepore\u2019s narrative of this period begins with President Warren Harding, who, she writes, \u201cin one of the worst inaugural addresses ever delivered,\u201d argued, in his own words<\/a>, \u201cfor lightened tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for sympathetic concern for all agricultural problems, for the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to Government\u2019s experiment in business, for more efficient business in Government, and for more efficient business in Government administration.\u201d Harding\u2019s sympathetic reference of farmers is a bit out of keeping with the rest of his remarks. Indeed, farmers had already been a protected class before 1920, and the situation only got worse when Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s administration implemented the Agricultural Adjustment Acts of the 1930s, which cartelized farming. But for all her indignation, Lepore never explains what is wrong with Harding\u2019s agenda. She merely rejects it out of hand, while mocking Harding\u2019s conviction.<\/p>\n

Given her doggedly progressive premises, Lepore may have predicted a calamitous meltdown in the American economy under Harding, but exactly the opposite occurred. Harding appointed an exceptionally strong cabinet that included as three of its principal luminaries Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Andrew Mellon as Secretary of Treasury, and Herbert Hoover as the ubiquitous Secretary of Commerce, with a portfolio far broader than that position manages today. And how did they perform? Lepore does not mention that Harding coped quickly and effectively with the serious recession of 1921<\/a> by refusing to follow Hoover\u2019s advice for aggressive intervention. Instead, Harding initiated powerful recovery by slashing the federal budget in half and reducing taxes across the board. Both Roosevelt and Obama did far worse in advancing recovery with their more interventionist efforts.<\/p>\n

To her credit, Lepore notes the successes of Harding\u2019s program: the rise of industrial production by 70 percent, an increase in the gross national product by about 40 percent, and growth in per capita income by close to 30 percent between 1922 and 1928. But, she doesn\u2019t seem to understand why that recovery was robust, especially in comparison with the long, drawn-out Roosevelt recession that lingered on<\/a> for years when he adopted the opposite policy of extensive cartelization and high taxes through the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Lepore is on sound ground when she attacks Harding and Coolidge for their 1920s legislation that isolated the American economy from the rest of the world. The Immigration Act of 1924<\/a> responded to nativist arguments by seriously curtailing immigration from Italy and Eastern Europe, subjecting millions to the ravages of the Nazis a generation later. Harding and Coolidge also increased tariffs<\/a> on imports during this period. What Lepore never quite grasps is that any critique of these actions rests most powerfully on the classical liberal worldview that she rejects. Indeed, Harding and Coolidge exhibited the same intellectual confusion<\/a> that today animates Donald Trump, who gets high marks for supporting deregulation and tax reductions at home, while simultaneously indulging in unduly restrictive immigration policies and mercantilist trade wars abroad. Analytically, however, the same pro-market policies should control both domestically and abroad. Hoover never got that message \u2014 as president, he signed the misguided Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930<\/a> that sharply reduced the volume of international trade to the detriment of both the United States and all of its trading partners, which helped turn what had been a short-term stock market downturn in 1929 into the enduring Great Depression of the 1930s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Richard Epstein’s review of Jill Lepore\u2019s recent book These Truths: A History of the United States, there’s some interesting discussion of the Harding and Coolidge administrations: Lepore\u2019s narrative of this period begins with President Warren Harding, who, she writes, \u201cin one of the worst inaugural addresses ever delivered,\u201d argued, in his own words, \u201cfor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,7,53,13],"tags":[883,1240,554,266,1185,1239],"class_list":["post-45101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-history","category-politics","category-usa","tag-calvincoolidge","tag-herberthoover","tag-immigration","tag-protectionism","tag-tariffs","tag-warrenharding"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bJr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45102,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45101\/revisions\/45102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}