On “All the Presidents’ Money” and “Mellon vs. Churchill”

July 28, 2026July 29, 2026 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

The fresh perspectives provided by new authors continue to reaffirm the importance of encouraging a deeper exploration of previously untapped studies in the fields of Presidential and Twenties historiography. This is not easy to accomplish, especially where the crowded terrain of Presidential topics is concerned, but Megan Gorman in “All the Presidents’ Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money” and Jill Eicher in “Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War” have achieved just that. They both have much new to offer the historical debate and analysis of Presidential leadership and fiscal policy. While both authors share similar expertise in investment planning and financial management, Ms. Eicher, a visiting scholar at Stanford and with the International Churchill Society, has served in the Treasury Department and the Bipartisan Policy Center (the latter, a think-tank launched in 2007 by Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell), closer to the process of crafting public policy than Ms. Gorman. Nevertheless, Ms. Gorman’s extensive experience as a founding partner of Chequers Financial Management, chairing the Investment Committee at the National Endowment for Financial Education, and past work at Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon Wealth Management, combined with a degree in History from Bryn Mawr and a Juris Doctor from Rutgers, all attest to her depth of knowledge and practical wisdom.

Ms. Gorman guides us through a broad consideration of the usually under-examined insights to be gained by approaching our Presidents through the questions: Who was best and who was worst with (their own) money? While her survey of successes and failures among the Presidents focuses on thirty of the forty-five individuals who have occupied the office, she demonstrates a generous empathy for the complementary role both President and First Lady hold not only in the People’s House but in their own household. It is as much an opportunity to meet some of the ladies who have passed through the Executive Mansion doors as it is to meet their husbands in a new light, most notably Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Martha Washington, Mary Lincoln, and Lady Bird Johnson. While there is no realistic expectation that the ongoing Presidential Rating Game will reach final resolution because of “All the Presidents’ Money” — it may prove a dire sign if it ever does — this is not Ms. Gorman’s goal. She does believe that aside from the human fascination with any inside look at the lifestyles and money choices of our top Executive leaders, the strongest motive for understanding financial decision-making through the lens of Presidential experiences comes down to this: “to see if they can emulate the good behaviors and emulate the bad (259).”

While the dream of upward mobility is now, in her perspective, more difficult to attain than perhaps it has ever been, Ms. Gorman encourages us to take up the challenge of gaining financial literacy without waiting for politicians to fix the broken nature of the system for us. She seems to discount that many readers approach the questions of Presidential household management with a less than dispassionate interest in who deserves their vote and partisan support. Perhaps this outlook is best summarized by turning the old adage from the Gospel of Luke on its head: “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?” Those Presidents who have mismanaged what was their own do not often prove successful at handling the resources or marshaling the institutions of others. Neither does it always hold true that the individual’s savvy with wealth-building possesses all the skills for the Presidency.

Without making any excuses for those Chief Executives who were also slaveholders, Ms. Gorman concludes Jefferson, Monroe, and Biden the three worst examples of governing their personal money. She diplomatically renders no opinion on any connection to their legacies with public money as Presidents. Her five best likely come as surprises to some: Eisenhower, Reagan, Ford, Washington, and Hoover. Ike’s calm head for financial matters, Reagan’s strength as a budgeter, Ford’s ability to gauge risk and pivot, Washington’s daily grit and meticulous focus on the long game financial well-being necessitates, and Hoover’s heroic path to accomplish a vision for himself and transform that resourcefulness into globally impactful service distinguish the top five Presidential exemplars, at least (once again) from a personal financial management perspective. It does not necessarily hold, then, that the best money managers make the best Chief Executives. Nor do poor managers inherently make bad Presidents. Consider Truman and Jefferson.

Coolidge’s inclusion, especially in chapter 6, draws some fascinating conclusions about the man and his money-management style. Devoid of self-interest to a fault, Coolidge’s long duration as a renter undermined if not hurt his own path toward financial freedom. Grace Coolidge’s role in her household is largely unexplored (including her own success as an author), like that of Lou Hoover’s role in the Hoover household, while Frank Stearns’ direct influence on fashion sense is overstated, an overall impact often overrated by contemporary correspondents and even the President’s inner circle. As Grace once said, speaking of herself and Mr. Stearns, “Many a time we have put our heads together and figured out that two and two made four, only to learn later that we had been adding the wrong numbers” (Grace Coolidge, An Autobiography 1992, 86). Susan Lewis Well’s “Calvin Coolidge at Home in Northampton” does well to discredit the implication that a darker motive existed for Coolidge to “retain a moral superiority over others” (Gorman 2024, 135). Perhaps Ms. Gorman meant the observation as a general insight, it is not always clear when she refers to particular Presidents or broad financial principles. While Craig Fehrman’s excellent book, “Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote” supplies a very good examination of Cal’s work as an author, including his monumentally successful memoirs, Ms. Gorman omits this key component in Coolidge’s financial journey. His daily column lasted only one year, a fact she incorrectly indicates lasted longer than it did. The column was valuable in Coolidge’s vision for the financial future but not at the omission of his other post-presidential projects as philanthropist and money-maker in a world that had not yet institutionalized what Presidents were to do after the White House. His involvement in New York Life, the National Tuberculosis Association, and American Foundation for the Blind are not included in Ms. Gorman’s work. These are some unfortunate oversights in the book. Other minor errors exist, including at times misidentification of the year particular Presidents assume or leave office (remembering that March 4 of the year following an election was Inauguration Day until the passage of the Twentieth Amendment, first going into effect on January 20, 1933) and the reference to General Zachary Taylor as “Old Hickory” (which was actually Andrew Jackson’s moniker). There is also the unfortunate misspelling of Amity Shlaes’ name in the bibliography, citing the 2014 edition of her biography, “Coolidge.” A few popular misconceptions survive in the pages of the book, namely the merits of FDR’s domestic and foreign policy successes. Such happens in any literary endeavor, but these relatively small mistakes hardly detract from a very wonderful contribution to the discussion of what makes Presidents enduringly instructive and worthy of continued study.

Eicher’s intriguing showcase of the war debts and reparations dispute, particularly as it involved Great Britain and the United States in the 1920s is no longer a neglected corner of the Era’s historiography. This is an area of study not completely untapped, as British professor David James Gill in his superlative work, “The Long Shadow of Default: Britain’s Unpaid War Debts to the United States, 1917-2020,” but one that most American academics simply do not bother to address. This is something now remedied by Ms. Eicher’s fine work. Much of the best scholarship on the Roaring Twenties originates from British sources, historians not weaned on the long-ingrained animus or ambivalence toward the Harding & Coolidge Era. Both Eicher and Gill do well to correct the misattributed quote, “They hired the money, didn’t they?” as weaponized to underscore Cal’s callous inflexibility, another piece of supposed evidence in the many attempts to craft his image as the grasping Scrooge or, as the Europeans of the Twenties often characterized America: the ultimate “Shylock,” a case of mistaken identity with the Congressional leaders unwilling to empower the Executive to work out Europe’s recovery with fullest parameters. Eicher, however, goes even further to confront that mistaken image of the Coolidge Presidency and his Treasury chief, Andrew W. Mellon, in her masterfully researched exploration of the moral nature of political versus commercial debt between nations as well as the case study that clashes two of the most significant figures of the twentieth century.

Churchill’s ability to chameleonize politically is not as surprising from the advantage of hindsight but it reminds us that Sir Winston was no less an opportunistic rhetorician and showboat politician on the issue of debts left from the Great War, when he could become such. It is to the credit of the Baldwin government that Churchill was strongly encouraged to embrace discretion and taciturnity even as Mellon and Coolidge strove to craft practical agreements despite Congressional intransigence to anything short of full repayment, principal and interest. The indiscretion of Garrard Winston, Mellon’s undersecretary, to throw fuel on the Peabody letter and reply to Churchill’s rhetoric gave the Congress every excuse it wanted to hamper Treasury and curtail Coolidge’s agenda. Ultimately, it is a testament to Mellon’s consistency and the practical tone set by Coolidge that America’s best customers are those who pay as they are able without an exacting creditor, a point lost on the grandstanding mavericks of Congress. Even as Churchill contributed to the narrative that would disparage the America of the Twenties in his multivolume The World Crisis, he finally had to acknowledge that the United States had helped pour rivers of money into the recovery of Europe throughout the decade (beginning with the Dawes Plan then the Young Plan), the antithesis of isolationism, and had shown a spirit of ready concession to complicated financial limitations. It could be argued that France’s stubborn insistence on reparations from Germany forestalled recovery, remaining the least obliging partner in debt negotiations and the crucial roadblock to the continent’s post-war rejuvenation. Perhaps the Weimar Republic may not have succumbed to political pressures if France had withdrawn earlier its demands for reparation.

Eicher’s book is a tremendous addition to the historiography. It is unfortunate that she seems to have rushed the ending, jumping from the one-year moratorium by President Hoover of debt payments in 1931, through the Lausanne Agreement (contingent on United States concessions), to the unilateral forgiveness by Britain in 1934 (two years after most of the smaller nations simply halted payment), to the political targeting of Mellon by the Roosevelt administration in 1936, the National Gallery of Art and the Lend-Lease program both opened in 1941, and the decades that followed in rapid succession. Of course, we await “The President and the Oligarch: Roosevelt, Mellon, and the Triumph of Big Government” by Greg Steinmetz, due out in October. We hope that Ms. Eicher will not run short of time to execute her next project. We look forward to what she will write in the future.

On Humanity at the Crossroads

September 13, 2025September 13, 2025 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

*Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, September 10, 2025. Photo credit: Trent Nelson/Salt Lake City Tribune/Getty*

The shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10th marks a loss of something far more fundamental than a martyr for America’s heart and soul, beleaguered as it is in the latest phases of the culture wars. Far more elemental than hateful actions rendered proportionately in return for hateful speech, the murder of Kirk reveals a stark collision between despair and hope, the outright repudiation of classically liberal ideals, ones that have inspired acts of heroism and sacrifice from John Quincy Adams’ work on the Amistad case to Frederick Douglass’ efforts to break racial stratification before, during, and after 1865, which have been followed by principled actions of bold, patriotic Americans in countless situations since. The same spirit animated Martin Luther King to envision a world where the content of one’s character triumphed above a regime maintained by violent suppression.

The most radical reformers across every era of the American experiment, from Garrison to Bryan, or Debs to Malcolm X, have presupposed that rational persuasion remained the single most powerful means of changing outcomes as a result of changing minds. An order where killing becomes the sanctioned norm, a culture that remedies electoral losses with blood, silences dissent through terror rather than reason, and solves problems by replacing open debate with dehumanized slaughter of those with whom one differs was the antithesis of the optimism inherent in political activism. Abandoning the freedom to speak, shirking the call to reasonably discuss, respectfully differ, and artfully refute for the license to suppress and silence is a fundamental departure from America’s citizenship.

The ‘final solution’ of literally assassinating influential adversaries plunges America into the service of animalistic impulses while goosestepping away from every vestige of what it means to be human, living life for the betterment of humanity. It discards every shred of the liberating hope and once prevailing faith Americans of every background, creed, and color have possessed for more than three centuries. This is not merely a killing of an individual, it is the death of confidence in anyone or anything still remaining in America to change for the better. It is ultimately a barbaric breach of faith with the historic ability Americans have shown from the beginning to improve themselves, return to ideals, and meet problems squarely and courageously when presented with good reasons for doing so. The force of persuasion connected to shared essentials has always compelled Americans far more effectively than lawless coercion.

This is what made Kirk so impactful a rhetorician whose exercise to the fullest extent of the obligations of his citizenship will continue to shape the future. When he could have shirked the duty and avoided the risk, he entered the arena, gaining support not from the exercise of speech for hateful, selfish ends but for liberating and humanizing ones, appealing to those most ensnared in the intellectual, political, and cultural mires of his generation. That he proved more effective than his opposition in debate vindicated the potency citizenship contains when put to full use, an obligation cowardly skeptics and timid critics fail to realize in themselves or to recognize in others.

As a President Kirk himself greatly admired, Calvin Coolidge had much to say about employing those obligations of American citizenship to their utmost capacity. The failure to do so, whatever one’s political persuasion, was dereliction and betrayal of the trust it still is to be a citizen of the United States. As these excerpts from an address on April 14, 1924 attest, Coolidge delivers what many considered one of the greatest speeches of his career. Whatever one thinks of the late Charlie Kirk, he is certainly not to be found deficient in the full engagement citizenship demands of every American. His sense of decency, even in the midst of fierce debate, and courage in marshaling every resource to win the mind to rational discourse and the will to civic participation will renew the faith and hope that America, by definition, is.

The gathering of the 33rd Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution, addressed by President Coolidge that evening, April 14, 1924. Photo credit: Daughters of the American Revolution.

“Institutions, whether adopted long ago or of more recent origin, are of themselves entirely insufficient. All of these are of no avail without the constant support of an enlightened public conscience. But still more is needed. Our only salvation lies also in the ever-present vigilant and determined action of the people themselves. The heroic thought and action of the Revolution must forever be supplemented by the heroic thought and action of to-day. Along with the great expansion of free institutions, which has carried them to all parts of the world in a startlingly brief historic period, there has gone a broadening of the principle of self-government. The ballot, in the earlier forms of democracy, was the privileged possession of a limited class. It was not looked upon as a right, but rather as the reward of some kind of high achievement, perhaps material, perhaps intellectual. But lately we have come upon times in which the vote is esteemed, not as a privilege or a special endowment bestowed only for cause shown, but more in the nature of an inherent right withheld only for cause shown. This new conception makes it no longer a privilege, no longer even a right which may be exercised or omitted as its possessor shall prefer. It becomes an obligation of citizenship, to be exercised with the highest measure of intelligence, thoughtfulness, and consideration for the public concern. The fundamental question of keeping America truly American is whether the obligation of citizenship is fully observed.

“Every voter ought not merely to vote, but to vote under the inspiration of a high purpose to serve the Nation. It has been calculated that in most elections only about half of those entitled to vote actually exercise their franchise. What is worse, a considerable part of those who neglect to vote do it because of a curious assumption of superiority to this elementary duty of the citizen. They presume to be rather too good, too exclusive, to soil their hands with the work of politics. Such an attitude cannot too vigorously be condemned. Popular government is facing one of the difficult phases of the perpetual trial to which it always has been and always will be subjected. It needs the support of every element of patriotism, intelligence, and capacity that can be summoned…

“[W]e have never seen, and it is unlikely that we ever shall see, the time when we can safely relax our vigilance and risk our institutions to run themselves under the hand of an active, even though well-intentioned, minority. Abraham Lincoln said that no man is good enough to govern any other man. To that we might add that no minority is good enough to be trusted with the government of a majority. And still further, we shall be wise if we maintain also that no majority can be trusted to be wise enough, and good enough, at all times, to exercise unlimited control over a minority. We need the restraints of a written constitution. To prevent the possibility of such things happening, we must require all citizens who are entitled to do so to take their full part in public affairs. We must be sure that they are educated, trained, and equipped to do their part well. We must not permit the mechanisms of government, the multiplicity of constitutional and statutory provisions to become so complex as to get beyond control by an aroused and informed electorate. We must provide ample facilities of education, and this will require constant expansion and liberalization. We must aim to impress upon each citizen the individual duty to be a sincere student of public problems, in order that they may rightly render the service which their citizenship exacts. But after all, good citizenship is neither intricate not involved. It is simple and direct. It is every-day common sense and justice.”

*“Not-so-silent” Cal. Photo credit: Library of Congress/Getty Images.*

On Loss and Redemption

July 4, 2025July 4, 2025 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

The Coolidges at Swampscott, July 4, 1925. Photo credit: Alton H. Blackington Collection.

Thirteen-year-old Harry Blaney had been working on a gift for the President and First Lady, staying that summer (the Coolidges’ first since losing their youngest boy to septicemia the previous July) at “White Court” in Swampscott, the large oceanfront house just six miles away. Blaney, whose family lived in Lynn, was the oldest boy of three, and the second oldest of Harry Sr. and Lillian Blaney. His father’s company, the Preble Toe Box Factory, made imitation leather toe boxes, the ‘box’ accommodating the space needed for toes in closed-toe shoes. The Blaney family worked hard, and young Harry aspired to follow in the family trade. On Thursday, July 2, 1925, just ahead of the President’s birthday weekend, Harry’s project was completed. He would be brave and deliver it himself. Harry had carved a wooden figure of the President, Mrs. Coolidge, and their dog, Rob Roy. His best chance to deliver his gift directly required that Harry leave the family residence on Groveland Street in Lynn bright and early in the morning to reach Littles Point in Swampscott, before the President began his workday. It might be seen as a presumptuous imposition but what young Harry had to give was important and worth crossing what perhaps was the smallest distance he had ever been (or perhaps ever would be) from a President. Moreover, as he recalled, the President had lost a son just a little older than himself. Harry would go right up to the gates of the residence and wait if had to, confident that someone would appear to accept his gift. He did not have to wait. He met the President out in the neighborhood still on his early morning walk. Mr. Coolidge stopped and spoke with the boy for a few moments but then Harry realized the ideal moment to proffer what he had brought was slipping away. He thrust out the wooden figure and relayed his regards. The President, always affected by sincere gestures of kindness and generosity from boys like Harry, thanked the young man for so kind a sentiment, and they parted.

It was another early morning, this time in November, four years later, that now seventeen-year-old Harry prepared to sit down to breakfast with his entire family one last time. The first blast followed swiftly by a second which engulfed the house in flames, set five other homes ablaze, threw employees out windows and doors or through the foot-thick concrete block walls of the factory. The explosion threw the various members of the household in all directions in a tower of fire. Employees were incinerated, blown to pieces, or otherwise suffocated. Others later died of burn injuries in the hospital. The fire departments of all surrounding neighborhoods rushed to the site, finding the scene a roaring, glass-strewn horror. The heroic actions of the fire departments to rescue the trapped, extinguish the flames, and extricate burn victims that day must be combined with the legendary work done by the medical teams at Lynn’s Hospital. Still, it was part of the entire community’s heroism. Some were rescued by quick-thinking bystanders who tore burning clothes from frantic victims fleeing the scene. Others by the twelve-year-old boy who triggered the first alarms by standing atop another’s shoulders. Even a makeshift triage center was set up by a neighbor across the street. Heroic sacrifice mingled with astounding grief. Harry’s mother and five of his siblings, including his six-month old sister, were caught by the blaze in the collapsing rubble, dying almost instantly. Their father, horribly burned, succumbed to his wounds in the hospital ten days after the funeral for their family. Even Harry and his brother Norm, violently thrown by the blast, had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Twenty-one died as a result of the disaster. Only Harry and Norm, with sisters Lillian and Ella, remained from the Blaney family. In the investigation and inquest that followed authorities traced the origin of the disaster to an ignition of the factory’s highly flammable celluloid (used in the processing of the imitation leather fabricated for toe boxes). The indictments and court proceedings that unfolded afterward initiated fire prevention and zoning regulations for towns like Lynn. Smaller towns and cities permanently separated residential from commercial properties and stipulated long-overdue precautions respecting the storage and handling of combustible materials like celluloid.

Photo credit: Swampscott Fire Fighters Union Local 1459.

A mere five days after the explosion, on November 13, 1928, a letter expressing profound sorrow found its way to young Harry from the President of the United States. Coolidge had not forgotten him or his sentiments that Independence Day week four years prior. “I hope you may find some consolation to relieve the heavy burden of sorrow that has come to you,” the President wrote Harry, “My deep sympathy goes out to you and the members of your family who have survived the shocking tragedy.” Young Harry did survive and found redemption out of the unspeakable loss. The gifts he (and his community) gave, beginning with one to a President a century ago, continue as reminders, however, that we recall greatness not in the act of receiving but in the act of giving. That is what makes the two hundred forty-ninth year since 1776 and one-hundred-fifty-third birthday of Coolidge so meaningful to us. They impart the reminder that redemption through loss remains. Moreover, they connect the gifts bestowed by the Declaration’s Signers with those of a young boy named Harry one hundred years ago.