I am thinking about an old joke, “He’s incompetent but at least he’s slow.” Isn’t there a US president who upon leaving office said he would be remembered for doing nothing (or something close to it)?
ChatGPT said:
I think the president you’re reaching for is Calvin Coolidge, although the wording you remember probably comes from a famous remark about him rather than something Coolidge himself said upon leaving office.
Coolidge deliberately believed that not acting was often the proper exercise of presidential power. His reputation became that of the quintessential “do-nothing president.”
The line that sounds remarkably close to your memory is attributed to humorist Will Rogers:
“He didn’t do nothing, but that’s what we wanted done.”
That line has stuck because it captures Coolidge’s governing philosophy remarkably well.
Coolidge wasn’t actually inactive. Rather, he thought a president’s job included preventing government from doing things that didn’t need doing. He vetoed legislation, restrained spending, reduced taxes and resisted expansion of the federal government. In other words, doing nothing could itself be a policy decision.
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