Coolidge liked the dignity of the presidency. He didn't get on the phone easily. It's possible that he banished the phone from his desk. He was known to use it from time to time. The person who was hilarious with the phone was Hoover. He was a real engineer. He made a closed circuit phone where he could call the important people and they could call him, a government hotline, but it was closed. He shut out the possibility of input from people he didn't expect to get input from.

Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.

People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.

Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.

Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents - Nixon, Ike, and Reagan - you see them failing on this score.

Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.

Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.