The first hardly needs much explanation, although we tend to forget just how much the young and photogenic Lindbergh seized the world’s imagination. Waiting to cheer him as he landed at Le Bourget airport were 150,000 Parisians. On his return to New York, perhaps 4 million Americans turned out to see him on a day with a ticker-tape parade, speeches in Central Park, and grand banquets. The French bestowed on him the Légion d’honneur, and the Americans gave the young Army Air Service reserve captain both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Medal of Honor.
Calvin Coolidge may seem a less dramatic and idolized figure, mostly because he was, in fact, a less dramatic and idolized figure. But his extended 1927 stay in the West signaled, as clearly as a transatlantic flight, just how much the world had changed. Presidents had fled the summer heat of Washington before, of course. James Buchanan retreated to Bedford, Pennsylvania, and Benjamin Harrison to Cape May, New Jersey. Woodrow Wilson got all the way to Cornish, New Hampshire. But before the 1920s, these trips had all been in the eastern United States, to ensure that the president could receive regular mail and return quickly if some emergency arose.