by Patrick J. Buchanan

In March 1929, the Harding-Coolidge era came to an end. The eight years had witnessed the greatest peacetime prosperity of any nation in history: America in the Roaring 20s. Early that March, Calvin Coolidge handed the presidency over to Herbert Hoover, who had just pulled off a third straight Republican landslide.

“I do not choose to run,” said Coolidge, who could easily have won a second full term. Silent Cal went home. Hoover, whom he privately derided as “Wonder Boy,” presided over the Crash of ‘29 and the first three years of the Great Depression.