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.

The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.

Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.

Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.

In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.

I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.

I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.