Further to Derb’s comments in re the matter of the ineffability of

Calvin Coolidge–and as an assist to K-Lo on what seems a slow

afternoon– a couple of thoughts:

1. As speechwriter in the Reagan White House, I often found myself

poring over the speeches of previous chief execs. Most of it was

dreck–I mean, really, the stuff was shockingly bad–with a long low

point running from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle

of the twentieth. The two exceptions? Abraham Lincoln…and Calvin

Coolidge. Coolidge doesn’t seem to have been much good in person–I

never came across any account of his having moved an audience to

rapture–but he understood that the primary means of dissemination in

his day remained the newspaper, and the man could write. His prose is

dry, but it’s also economical, crisp, logical, and touched with a

certain spare beauty.

2. The Gipper himself thought highly of Coolidge–so highly that he

hung Cal’s portrait in the Cabinet Room.