An article at COUNTERPUNCH compares the Coolidge presidency to the present presidency:

The country is in the mood for monochromatic simplicities like never since the days when Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge posed as presidents, Congress was somnolent, and William Howard Taft, that rotund mediocrity, was chief justice of the very conservative supreme court he'd packed a few years earlier, when he was president. [1]

The following sentence, a 'monochromatic simplicity' extraordinaire, came from the lips of Calvin Coolidge:

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. [2]

Or by Dan Quayle, PNAC signatory, defense policy wonk and vice president under George HW Bush. A Bush protege whose accomplishments in the fields of analytical thinking and arts and letters are .... unexcelled, shall we say:

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in `Red Storm Rising'. -- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/6/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Also reported by Newsweek, 9/88 [4]

George W Bush carries on in the tradition of his father. He said:

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself." — George W. Bush, Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29, 2003 [5]

Brains of a feather. Perhaps we have stumbled onto the reason behind the curious behaviour that George the father reportedly exhibited when he moved into the Oval Office: he took Calvin Coolidge down from the wall, replacing him with Franklin Roosevelt. If only character change were that easy.

Coolidge is also remembered for having said, 'The business of America is business' - which sums up his approach to policy pretty well, according to historian Howard Zinn [6]. As it turns out, Coolidge was unhappily one of the few Republican presidents to put his fiscal money where his mouth was:

The last Republican presidents to preside over a decrease in federal spending were Warren G. Harding (who served from 1921 until his death in 1923) and Calvin Coolidge (who served from 1923 until 1929). During that time federal spending decreased 44% from $5 billion to $2.85 billion. However, spending began increasing again in 1928 before Calvin Coolidge left office. [7]

Andrew W. Mellon was Secretary of the Treasury at that time. He had been Secretary of the Treasury under Harding and would assume the same position in the Hoover Administration. The drastic cuts that were suffered under Coolidge and and Harding paved the way for the 'Mellon Plan' under Truman - tax cuts for the very rich. [See: the Warren Harding Administration for more details.]

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes 'extended the Open Door Policy to all European colonies and Eastern Europe'.

The Cold War was about the opening of the Russian and the Eastern European frontiers for American expansionism and Open Door imperialism. [8]

... I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. [9].

As it turns out, many of Coolidge's cabinet members served during the Harding Administration.