The minimalist president: Calvin Coolidge's admirable do-nothing spirit.

• Author: Healy, Gene
• Position: Biography

IF THERE WAS ever a time when the president could simply preside, it has long passed. As early as the Eisenhower era, political scientist Clinton Rossiter observed that the public had come to see the federal chief executive as "a combination of scoutmaster, Delphic oracle, hero of the silver screen, and father of the multitudes." Under the pressure of public demands, the office had accrued a host of responsibilities over and above its constitutional ones: "World Leader," "Protector of the Peace," "Chief Legislator," "Manager of Prosperity," "Voice of the People," and more.

To that daunting portfolio add "Feeler-in-Chief," a term coined in all earnestness by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in 2010 while lashing out at Barack Obama for being insufficiently emotive about the BP oil spill. Obama, she wrote, had "resisted fulfilling a signal part of his job: being a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting what Americans feel so they know he gets it."

Poor MoDo would have kicked the cat in sheer frustration if confronted by the implacable, inscrutable Calvin Coolidge, whose reaction to the presidency's more unreasonable demands was a Bartleby-like "I prefer not to." Shortly after taking office in 1923, Coolidge informed the press that he did not intend "to surrender to every emotional movement" toward executive cures for whatever ails the body politic. In the midst of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which killed hundreds and left some 600,000 Americans homeless, Coolidge resisted calls for federal relief, even refusing a request by NBC that he broadcast a nationwide radio appeal for aid.

In her new biography, Coolidge, Amity Shlaes, Bloomberg News columnist and author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, suggests that in our current era of fiscal and emotional incontinence, we have much to learn from this parsimonious president. And while the journey through Coolidge can be dull at times, Shlaes demonstrates that there's something to be said for boring chief executives.

"Debt takes its toll," Coolidge begins. Shlaes underscores that point with an absorbing anecdote about one of Cal's forebears, Oliver Coolidge, who in 1849, for want of 30 bucks to pay off a creditor, suffered through a stint in debtor's prison. "Lame in one leg from birth," Oliver, the brother of the president's great-grandfather, had never been able to farm the rocky land of southeastern Vermont as well as the other Coolidges. And so, at age 61, he found himself behind bars, cursing...