Eh, he was decent on a few issues, including subjects like civil rights (even though he signed the racist Immigration Act of 1924), but his foreign policy knowledge and efforts were poor and the economic policies were a big contributor to economic inequality and severe poverty, particularly among farmers, plus the Great Depression loomed as an after effect of his administration. He's, generally, rated as a lower half of all presidents for a reason.
He basically ended the second wave on the KKK. I'd say he was more than decent at civil rights especially for the times. His economic polices lead to one of the greatest booms in our history and did not lead to the great depression or hurt farmers. Farmers were hurt because of the rapid chance in technology and how that increased production and drove prices down. The Great Depression should have just been a run of the mill recession, but the miss action by the Federal Reserve created the depression and Hoover and FDR's policies to fix it made it worst and last longer.
Coolidge didn't end the 2nd wave of the KKK, they sort of did themselves in through a series of scandals and other factors. He did, though, have a pretty good attitude towards civil rights, even if he didn't do very much other than give Indians citizenship. The Immigration Act was a major stain on his legacy. His denial of relief for farmers was devastating and his economic policies certainly did contribute to a massive economic and market crash due to his stringent laissez-faire attitude and actions. He was just meh, to me.
that last paragraph especially is a libertarian fantasy based purely on ideological necessity. you HAVE to believe it, or the whole thing falls apart because the world is suddenly bigger than an individual.
You’re out of your depth on that statement. The Reserve cut the currency by 1/3 during the down turn drying up the money supply, which crashed tons of finical institutions. This put the country and the rest of the world into a depression. Banks and members of Congress urged the reserve to change course and to increase monetary instead of restricting it. But they didn’t. Had the reserve increased the monetary demand the Great Depression would have been just a recession that would haves ended late 1930 or 1931 at the latest.
A more cynical person might believe that those in charge of the Federal Reserve did it on purpose. Business acquisition was really cheap and rampant during the depression, as people went bankrupt. So one could make the point those pulling the strings behind the curtains at the federal reserve did it for personal gain.
