I have not read Heroic Conservatism, former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson’s political memoir. Frankly, I can’t suppress my gag reflex long enough to get past the title.

But according to one reviewer, Mr. Gerson refers to fiscal conservatives as “small minded, cold, and uninspired.”

Apparently, Mr. Gerson feels that anyone who wants to spare the taxpayers’ wallets is a Scrooge.

For an appropriate reply, I quote from the 1925 inaugural address of the GOP’s all-time champion of fiscal conservatism: Calvin Coolidge.

On taking office, Mr. Coolidge said this: “I favor the principle of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its practical form…” [Emphasis supplied.]

Coolidge had such regard for “the men and women of this country who toil” that he halted the 21-gun salutes customarily fired as the presidential yacht drew up alongside George Washington’s Mount Vernon. “It costs money to fire so many guns,” he fretted. “So have them play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

In contrast, Mike Gerson wrote speeches for a president who was responsible for the greatest expansion of federal entitlements since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and who, for more than half of his time in office, didn’t veto a single spending bill. He let Republican pork-barrel spenders in Congress run hog wild.

Real conservatives have always been fiscal conservatives. Ronald Reagan hung Calvin Coolidge’s official portrait in the cabinet room during his presidency. The liberals and intellectuals scoffed, but that was Mr. Reagan’s way of demonstrating his commitment to give the American taxpayers the best possible value for their dollar.

If the Republicans are to have even the slightest hope of recovering their credibility on fiscal matters, they need to imitate not “heroic” conservatives, but conservatives like the president known to history as “Silent Cal” –- a man of few words but much sense.