![[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 30.A.) Calvin Coolidge turns PR into Presidential Relations, an interview with David Greenberg](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/6525cc0e1e417ed39f762f8124d08715bf80d60045828e7dbdde538ee5b7f9b9.avif)
30.A.) Calvin Coolidge turns PR into Presidential Relations, an interview with David Greenberg
[Abridged] Presidential Histories
12/19/22
•54m
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History remembers Calvin Coolidge as "Silent Cal," but the notoriously quiet president was also an early adopter of emerging forms of mass media, such as radio and motion picture.
Join me as I talk to historian David Greenberg, author of Calvin Coolidge and Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, about how Coolidge quietly became one of the more effective image manipulators of the early 20th century.
Previous Episode
30.) Calvin Coolidge 1923-1929
December 5, 2022
•51m
"The business of America is business." - Calvin Coolidge.
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Calvin Coolidge had a saying: When you see 10 problems coming down the road, nine will probably go into the ditch on their own. Translation? Don't do anything. But what happens when the one problem that doesn't go into the ditch is the Great Depression?
Follow along as Coolidge works his way up the government food chain to VP, becomes president when Harding dies, introduces new tools like radio and motion picture to the presidential PR kit, enjoys one of the most fortuitous presidencies in U.S. history, and then leaves office just in time for the Great Depression to smack Herbert Hoover in the face instead of Cal.
Bibliography
1. Calvin Coolidge - David Greenberg
2. Warren G Harding – John W. Dean
3. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times - Kenneth Whyte
Next Episode
31.) Herbert Hoover 1929-1933
January 2, 2023
•57m
"In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land." - Herbert Hoover.
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Herbert Hoover made his fortune as a mining engineer, made his name as a humanitarian leader, and lost his reputation as a president. Nobody knew the great Depression was coming when they elected Hoover, but the great irony of his presidency is that, after savings millions of lives as a humanitarian during national and global emergencies, he's the first guy most Americans would have turned to if they had known it was coming. He went above and beyond what any previous president had dared try to combat a financial panic, but it wasn't enough.
Follow along as Hoover goes from being an orphan, to a member of Stanford's inaugural class, to the gold fields of Australia and China, and the boardrooms of Britain, only to shed his business identity for a 15-year career as a humanitarian from Belgium to the Mississippi, and ultimately win the White House, only for a series of economic calamities known as the Great Depression to destroy his administration and reputation. By the time Hoover leaves the White House, his name will be a synonym for homeless encampments.
Bibliography
1. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times - Kenneth Whyte
2. FDR – Jean Edward Smith
3. Calvin Coolidge - David Greenberg
4. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole
5. Warren G Harding – John W. Dean
6. Truman – David McCullough
7. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
8. Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
9. William Howard Taft – Jeffrey Rosen
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