The Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation has announced the establishment of the first annual "Coolidge Prize for Journalism," honoring authors who write in the spirit of America's 30th president.
The winner of the prize – a $20,000 award known as "The Coolidge" – will be announced on Tuesday, November 12 at a gala dinner at New York City's Four Season's Hotel that features Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve System, as guest speaker.
"Like Calvin Coolidge, Paul Volcker believes in savings by government and fiscal responsibility," Amity Shlaes, chairman of the board of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, told Newsmax. "Coolidge's principles are the ones that warrant more attention today – discipline, brevity, civility, and focus on debt and the economy."
Shlaes, a prize-winning historian, Forbes columnist, and George W. Bush Center Scholar, has been one of the key figures in bringing to light Coolidge's legacy and the fiscal philosophy he lived by as president from 1923-29.
"Coolidge," her recent eponymous biography, was praised by The Economist magazine and cited by MSNBC on its "Morning Joe" blog, which noted that President Coolidge "has reemerged as a hero of small government Republicanism."
Before his recent revival, Coolidge was a hero to at least one notable conservative: Ronald Reagan, who proudly hung a portrait of his predecessor in the White House's Cabinet Room as soon as he took up residence there himself in 1981.
"I'd always thought of Coolidge as one of our most underrated presidents," Reagan wrote in his autobiography, "An American Life." "He wasn't a man of flamboyant looks or style, but he got things done in a quiet way."
"He came into office after World War I facing a mountain of war debt, but instead of raising taxes, he cut the tax rate and government revenues increased, permitting him to eliminate the wartime debt and proving that the principle mentioned by Ibn Khaldun about lower taxes meaning greater tax revenues still worked in the modern world," Reagan wrote.
Another modern political figure, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, has been likened to Coolidge for his successful fight to curb state debt by making public employees pay a greater share of their pension and healthcare plans.
"Calvin Coolidge would have shut down the government if he were president today and face the same situation we do now," Shlaes told Newsmax, explaining that the taciturn New Englander remembered as "Silent Cal" believed that "men have to live by the consequences of our system."
"President Coolidge felt strongly that government must be trustworthy, that its leaders would do what they say they would or no one would believe it," Shlaes said.
But, she added, "Coolidge would have spent all spring taking whatever painful steps he had to avoid coming to the situation we now face."
"President Coolidge felt strongly that government must be trustworthy, that its leaders would do what they say they would or no one would believe it," Shlaes said.
"The Coolidge" prize will be awarded to an author with the best submission of up to three published articles of fewer than 800 words each.
A secondary prize known as "The Calvin" will honor a writer under the age of 20 residing in Coolidge's birth state of Vermont who produces a work published, or unpublished, of 1,000 words or fewer in the spirit of President Coolidge. "The Calvin" carries with it a scholarship of $1,500, plus expenses to travel to New York to receive the award.
An all-star panel will determine the winner of "The Coolidge," with judges including former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, pollster Doug Schoen, historian Richard Norton Smith, and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, and Shlaes.
Judges for "The Calvin" include former Vermont Gov. James Douglas, historian David Pietrusza, and Jennifer Sayles Harville, great grand-daughter of President Coolidge. Christopher Coolidge Jeter, a great-grandson, will present the prize to the winner.
A little-known fact about the 30th president is that, after leaving the White House, he wrote a syndicated newspaper column entitled "Calvin Coolidge Says." The McClure Syndicate soon found that the column was so popular that it was carried in Japanese papers.
For one year, Coolidge wrote a column on current affairs six days a week and had it wired in to meet deadline. True to form, the columnist never sent editors a column more than 150 or 200 words because if he submitted anything more than that to editors, he explained, "it might put them out."
More information about the Nov. 12 dinner in New York awarding the Calvin Coolidge journalism prizes can be found on the
Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation website.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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