VIRUS VANQUISHER
Calvin Coolidge doesn’t get much of a look-in when American historians, as they are wont to do, rank their presidents. For instance, in a 2019 survey of 170 scholars, he came 28th (out of 44), two places ahead of George W Bush, not many people’s idea of a political giant.
US historians tend to go weak at the knees over activist, charismatic presidents such as the Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin, and John Kennedy. Coolidge, president from 1923 to 1929, was a small-government conservative and so self-effacing he was dubbed “Silent Cal”.
The barb that perhaps sealed Coolidge’s reputation as
