The election of 1920 threw the Democratic Party back on its heels. After eight years under the largely successful leadership of the progressive administration of President Woodrow Wilson, the party’s fortunes took a sudden turn back toward the minority status that it had come to know, for the most part, in presidential politics since the Civil War. After the Harding landslide, the Democrats were again reminded that the White House had become Republican turf, for only two Democrats—Wilson and Grover Cleveland—had taken up occupancy there since 1861; or in other words, in the sixty years between the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and the election of Harding, the Democrats held the presidency for only sixteen of those years, and they did so without winning a majority of the popular vote. In the election of 1920, those sixteen years now appeared more than ever to be an aberration from the trend.
Nonetheless, in the midterm elections of 1922, the Democrats, as is ordinarily the case during midterms, recovered, regaining eighty seats in Congress. This was in part due to a reaction to an economic downturn, and partly a predictable reoccurrence of a patterned tendency in midterm elections for a party to regain lost ground. But it was also in part due to continued divisions between progressives and conservatives within the Republican Party itself, and these divisions were again weakening party unity and frustrating coherent leadership. Recapturing eighty seats exceeds the expected midterm gains; thus the Democrats had reason to be optimistic going into the campaign season of 1924. The midterm elections also signaled important trends regarding regional loyalties. Democrats showed strength in traditional Republican areas, particularly the Northeast, where increased votes for Democrats were observed in the larger cities. Additionally, the infamous Teapot Dome bribery scandal (which involved illegalities surrounding the improper use of the federal oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California) associated with the Harding administration came to light, threatening to compromise Republican efforts at holding the White House. At the time, Teapot Dome was regarded as the most damaging scandal in the history of presidential administrations, and while President Harding himself seemed to be uninvolved, the public felt outraged and were unlikely to disassociate the president from the corruption within his administration. The scandal, as investigations revealed, was not confined to Republicans alone, as some prominent Democrats were also implicated. But a far sadder event intervened, for in August 1923, President Harding passed away after only two years and five months in office, leaving his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, as his heir to the office of the presidency, an unexpected and sobering development that deflated the effect of the scandal in the upcoming election year. Furthermore, as the economy recovered from the downturn that had been experienced in the early part of the decade, the reputation of the administration’s policies and overall leadership rebounded.
In mid-June of the election year 1924, Republicans convened in Cleveland, and as expected, President Coolidge was easily nominated to run for a full term. Coolidge, known for his laconic manner and respected for his honesty and work ethic, had gained a reputation as a liberal while serving as governor of Massachusetts before his election to the vice presidency in 1920. However, other liberal/progressive Republicans were not persuaded by his credentials. In fact, Coolidge was a firm advocate of limited government and free markets, a preference that in today’s political culture would place him in the fiscal conservative camp. For a short time, the progressive Republican Hiram Johnson, former running mate of Theodore Roosevelt on the 1912 Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket and current senator from California, appeared once again as a challenger; and the party’s other famous progressive, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, was preparing to bolt and run under the Progressive banner. Both Hiram and La Follette sharply criticized the pro-business policies of the Harding administration and, by extension, the Coolidge administration. Coolidge and his supporters thus worked to win more liberal Republicans to his side. To the surprise of many political observers, Coolidge defeated Johnson in numerous primaries leading up to the convention, leaving little doubt as to the incumbent president’s political strength. To the more conservative leadership, Coolidge also seemed to raise questions; but after the president’s primary showing, it was evident that no candidate from either wing of the party held the promise of winning in November other than Coolidge.
But Coolidge, to solidify his position, still needed to underplay the more liberal aspects of his thinking so as to appease the Old Guard conservatives without chasing too many progressives away from the party. The memories of 1912 were still strong; hence Coolidge sought to reach out to both wings, and apparently with a high degree of success—he managed to deflect Johnson’s primary season challenge, a prelude to his convincing nomination on the convention’s first ballot, winning 1,065 votes to LaFollette’s 34 and Johnson’s 10. This can be explained in part as a consequence of the advantage of incumbency, and also in part to Coolidge’s own skill in assuming the presidency without difficulty and acquitting himself as a capable leader—in the eyes of many, more capable than the late President Harding. It may also be viewed as evidence that the Republican Party, by unequivocally rejecting both Johnson and La Follette, was shifting still further away from the progressive legacy that had been built by Theodore Roosevelt.
The Republican platform of that year, reflecting a less progressive tone, applauded the decision of the Republican Congress to significantly decrease taxes and federal expenditures, reaffirmed Republican support of high protective tariffs to protect American business and industry from foreign competition, and, significantly, opposed federal crop subsidies. However, it included more moderate-to-liberal positions as well, endorsing the eight-hour workday, advocating restrictions on child labor, and proposing a federal anti-lynching law. Above all, the platform described Coolidge as a “practical idealist,” a phrase that reveals much about the new attitude of the party that once held the allegiance of some of the more important figures in the progressive movement.
The convention selected Charles Dawes of Illinois, the dramatic and provocative orator and former budget director—stylistically, the “anti-Coolidge”—to balance the ticket. For a time, a number of candidates were suggested, including Herbert Hoover, the party’s most exciting prospect, who was at that time viewed by some as too invaluable to Coolidge’s cabinet as secretary of commerce to be shifted to the vice presidency, and viewed by others as potentially capable of overshadowing his own president, and thus better kept, at least for the moment, from the limelight of a presidential campaign. Frank Lowden, the former governor of Illinois who was a serious candidate (he held brief leads in the balloting for president in 1920, winning the most delegates on two of the ten ballots before the nomination of Harding) for the GOP nomination four years earlier, was also in the running and actually led the field after one ballot. Congressman Theodore Burton of Ohio and Senator William S. Kenyon of Iowa were also considered and received some support, but on the third ballot, Dawes was nominated by winning 682 delegates, with Hoover in second, commanding 234 delegates.
Coolidge-Dawes, the former from Massachusetts and the latter from Illinois, reflected Republican regional strongholds of the Northeast and the Midwest. The delegates also saw Dawes as a partisan lance wielder, on the attack while the ever-reticent Coolidge would coolly remain aloof and above it all. This tactic was a forerunner of a similar approach in later campaigns: choosing a hard-nosed hatchet man, such as Dawes, Richard Nixon (1952 and 1956), or Bob Dole (1976) for the bottom of the ticket to deflect political heat away from the more mellow top half—Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, and Gerald Ford, respectively. Indeed, “Keep Cool with Coolidge” was the Republicans’ defining slogan, “Silent Cal” himself their central and defining image.
Democrats, while hopeful of recapturing the White House, experienced the widest field of candidates in the history of American presidential campaigns to that point. The Democrats entered their convention divided along numerous lines: conservative versus progressive, pro-Prohibition (known as the “drys”) versus anti-Prohibition (the “wets”), urban versus rural, Protestant versus Catholic (two candidates at the convention were Roman Catholics), and pro-Catholic/anti-Ku Klux Klan versus anti-Catholic/ pro-Klan. Significantly, the Klan, after nearly dying out, experienced a resurgence in the postwar period that was marked by the Red Scare, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism in some parts of the country, and, as one would expect, increased racism throughout the country. Some have blamed the Klan’s comeback, at least in part, on the release of D. W. Griffith’s racist 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, an event that would prove to be a culturally significant moment, and not for the better. For whatever reasons, the Klan now enjoyed more political influence than it had at any point since the post-Reconstruction period, and it even held sway over large segments within the political mainstream, particularly among Southern Democrats, but certainly not exclusively, as the Klan was also increasingly popular in parts of the Midwest and the West. Indeed, the Klan had become so influential that it would play a principal part in the direction of the convention, a most unwelcome part for many delegates representing the more liberal and ethnically diverse Northeast, but one that was encouraged among Southern delegates. Owing to the Klan’s visible role at the convention’s proceedings—and more particularly, to a large and well-publicized Klan rally that occurred within the vicinity of the convention hall and in which several convention delegates participated—the 1924 Democratic Convention has come to be known as the “Klanbake” convention. Additionally, the issue of Prohibition—which was largely divided along sectional lines, with the Northeastern Democrats (the wets) favoring repeal of Prohibition, and Southern and Western Democrats tending to be dry—divided the party and compromised unity. Similarly, Northeastern Democrats tended to be liberal, either pro-Catholic or tolerant of Catholics, and anti-Klan, while the Klan held strong support in the South and parts of the Midwest. These divisions fueled considerable tension throughout the convention, thus weakening any chance the Democrats might have had in challenging the Coolidge-Dawes ticket.
In the months prior to the convention, the front-runners in this highly populated field were former secretary of the treasury William G. McAdoo of California; Governor Al Smith of New York; and John Davis of West Virginia, a former diplomat and member of the House of Representatives. McAdoo, a serious candidate at the 1920 convention who was also former president Wilson’s son-in-law, was a “dry” who appealed to Southern delegates and especially to the Klan faction, largely due to his opposition to a proposed anti-Klan platform plank (although McAdoo himself was not a Klan member). The plank, which was proposed by Forney Johnston, an anti-Klan delegate from Alabama, called for the party to rebuke the Klan for its practice of engaging in intimidation and violence. It was this proposal that sparked the Klanbake rally in proximity to the convention venue, one that was marked by burning crosses, inflammatory speeches against African Americans and Catholics, and effigies of Al Smith put to the torch. Governor Smith, a Roman Catholic who had received some minor support for the nomination in 1920 and who was particularly popular with the liberal wing of the party, was well known as an enemy of the Klan, a “wet” critic of Prohibition, and a candidate that would, it was hoped, help to raise interest among African American voters (Smith was also know for his mentoring friendship with Franklin Roosevelt, the party’s 1920 candidate for the vice presidency). Davis was a former ambassador to Britain; a severe, frequent, and explicit critic of the Klan; and, like McAdoo and Smith, a candidate who had been in play for nomination in the previous convention. Joining these front-runners, among many others, were notably Alabama’s Senator Oscar Underwood, Indiana’s Governor Samuel Ralston, and Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana. James M. Cox, who received the party’s nomination in 1920, was also in the running; but he was not considered to be among the convention favorites. In all, fifty-eight individuals received at least one vote at the convention, a cohort that included in its numbers a large portion who, such as the popular satirist Will Rogers, were not really considered as serious choices but were nonetheless mentioned as symbolic gestures.
Nonetheless, the list included numerous substantive candidates—even Franklin Roosevelt, who now quite sadly suffered debilitating paralysis as a result of having contracted polio, received two votes at the convention. Roosevelt had been Cox’s running mate in 1920, and had it not been for his tragic illness, he might have been a strong contender for the top of the ticket in 1924, perhaps the front-runner himself. Roosevelt’s hour had not yet come, but he nonetheless was a visible and important presence at the 1924 convention in spite of his many struggles. But following the example of his famous cousin, Franklin Roosevelt was thoroughly irrepressible, and he exerted his influence at the convention, the state of his health notwithstanding. It was Roosevelt who nominated his friend Smith, whom he generously referred to as the “Happy Warrior” in an enthusiastic and rousingly memorable speech. The Happy Warrior, which could describe Roosevelt himself just as easily as it would define Smith, was a reference to the beloved poem by William Wordsworth, which opens with the following lines:
Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright
Wordsworth’s verse was meant to encapsulate those qualities most admired of Smith, and because of his recitation of this verse in Smith’s honor, Roosevelt is usually given credit for assigning this nickname to his friend and mentor; but it has also been traced to Judge Joseph M. K. Proskauer, who had earlier managed Smith’s gubernatorial campaign in 1920, and who, as the story goes, incorporated the Wordsworth phrase into one of Smith’s own speeches. Regardless of its original source, Roosevelt turned the phrase into one of the convention’s more inspiring moments. From this point, the nickname took hold, and throughout his political career, Smith was associated with the image of the Happy Warrior, an image that, as stated above, could be applied to Roosevelt with equal accuracy, and that would also later be inherited by another great optimist of the political arena, Hubert Humphrey.
From the beginning, it seemed that the convention, based on the early balloting, would select McAdoo. He held a substantial lead on the first ballot, winning 431 delegates, with Smith a distant second, supported by 241. Cox, Davis, and Underwood all finished far back, and no other candidate received more than 59 first-ballot votes (Cox). As the convention progressed, McAdoo and Smith emerged as the main rivals. Smith was a rallying point for the Catholic bloc, while the Protestant McAdoo, as one would expect, held the Protestant delegates. Smith supporters were mainly urban and Northeastern and consisted of numerous ethnic groups, while McAdoo enjoyed influence over rural and small-town delegates, primarily in the South. McAdoo was favored by the Klan delegates, and as one would expect, the Catholic Smith was vilified by them. McAdoo’s early success seemed to indicate a clear preference from the floor, but front-runner status can be weakened in such a large field, and as the balloting droned on without any end in sight, McAdoo was unable to muster enough delegates for the needed majority.
McAdoo kept the lead through most of the convention, peaking at 528 votes on the unprecedented seventieth ballot, an extraordinary number; but at this peak, he was still unable to gain the two-thirds majority, or 729 votes, needed to win the nomination. Smith did not fare any better, as his best showing was no higher than 368 votes, still far below McAdoo’s best, although Smith did come within one vote of McAdoo on the ninety-ninth ballot. As the convention moved toward its staggering one-hundredth ballot, both wearied candidates reluctantly agreed to withdraw; but diehards, refusing to abandon their allegiances, boosted the Happy Warrior into first with 351 votes to McAdoo’s 190 on a ballot that now placed Davis in second, winning 203 delegates, his highest number to that point. The most deadlocked, protracted convention in history appeared to be at an irresolvable impasse. Compromise candidates were floated, among them Governor Ralston, who, like McAdoo, was supported by the Klan, and who had begun to draw more interest in the latter ballots. But for personal reasons, Ralston withdrew his name as the convention wore on. The balloting had lurched along for such a long time with no end to it in sight that some delegates, due to depleted funds, had to quit the convention and return home.
However, things finally began to move. After the hundred-and-first ballot, Davis, the former ambassador, suddenly jumped into the lead, carrying 316 votes to 229 for Underwood, with Smith now fading to 121 delegates. The following ballot strengthened Davis’s position at 415, Underwood moving up as well to win 307, and Senator Walsh (who, like Smith, was also a Roman Catholic and thus anathema to the Klan element at the convention) suddenly moving into third with 123. Finally, on the hundred-and-third ballot, the frazzled convention rejected McAdoo and Smith and selected Davis, nominating him by acclamation at the end of the longest nominating process in the history of national political conventions. Davis was clearly not the convention’s preferred choice, but given no solution to the McAdoo-Smith deadlock, he emerged as the most reasonable compromise. Throughout the convention, Davis ran mostly in third place, slipping to fourth on a few ballots and only leading on the last two, and his nomination by acclamation seems to have been an act of acquiescence more than affirmation. But in the end, it was John W. Davis of West Virginia who now bore the standard for the Democratic Party.
For the vice presidency, the convention selected Charles W. Bryan, the brother of William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner still holding some influence within the party and the abiding devotion of its more progressive wing. Thus the ticket consisted of a career public servant with diverse experience (having served not only as ambassador to the Court of St. James but also as solicitor general as well as a member of the House of Representatives), a Wall Street lawyer who was viewed by many as a moderate-to-conservative candidate; and Bryan, who, like his more famous brother, was regarded by most within the party as a radical, thus causing some displeasure within the leadership. But the top of the ticket is what matters; and in Davis, the Democrats chose a candidate who to some appeared more conservative than his Republican counterpart, Vice President Coolidge. It should be noted that even though the Democratic convention was infected with racism and religious bigotry, it is also noteworthy for being the first time in American history that a major party considered a woman for the vice presidency (the first woman to receive a vice presidential nomination from any party was Marietta Stow in 1884, for what was called the National Equal Rights Party). Lena Springs, originally from Tennessee and a delegate from South Carolina, a scholar at North Carolina’s Queens College, an activist for women’s rights, and a well-known delegate at the convention, was nominated to run with Davis. Springs received some support from the floor, but not enough to make anything more than a symbolic run at the office.
The Democratic platform sharply criticized widespread corruption within the Harding administration. The platform also opposed protective tariffs imposed by the Republican Congress and the lowering of income tax rates on the wealthy. As to the controversy surrounding the Klan’s influence at the convention, the delegates, as stated above, following McAdoo’s leadership on the issue, rejected the platform plank proposed by liberal Democrats that would have formally, explicitly censured the Klan. William Jennings Bryan, still in many ways the titular leader of the party, opposed the Klan in principle but argued against directly censuring the Klan by name, fearing that such an action might drive a further wedge between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party. In the end, the party settled on compromise language that affirmed that Democrats “insist at all times upon obedience to the orderly processes of the law and deplore and condemn any effort to arouse religious or racial dissension.”
Meanwhile, Robert La Follette broke from the Republican Party, becoming the latest nominee of the Progressive Party that had been founded by former president Theodore Roosevelt twelve years earlier. La Follette drew support from the Socialist Party as well, along with disenchanted progressives from both the Republican and Democratic parties, various farming and labor associations, and a variety of progressive and radical groups. For the vice presidency, the Progressive Party nominated a renegade Democrat, Montana’s Senator Burton L. Wheeler. The Prohibition Party returned with another candidate, Herman P. Farris of Missouri, and it was joined by two other minor parties—the American Party; and, for the first time in a presidential campaign, an officially nominated candidate from the Communist Party, William Z. Foster. But the Progressive Party commanded the most attention among the minor parties. La Follette, who was a severe critic of the two establishment parties and viewed them as equally tied to monied interests, was an appealing candidate to a number of disenchanted and disaffected citizens. As such, his candidacy could cause the same kind of problems for either party as Theodore Roosevelt’s schismatic campaign had for the Republicans in 1912. As one would expect, the Progressive platform called for stricter enforcement of anti-trust laws, public ownership of railroads and water resources, higher estate taxes, government crop price supports, a constitutional amendment to prohibit child labor, and a number of other progressive proposals.
Technology was becoming increasingly evident in political campaigning, and the presidential contest of 1924 was certainly influenced by innovation. The use of radio as a tool for campaign coverage, as well as reporting election results, became widespread during this campaign season. The coverage constituted the first time the American people had the opportunity to listen in on the national political conventions. During the campaign, Coolidge and Davis made frequent radio appearances. And in further use of the latest technology, a group of Coolidge supporters conducted a cross-country automobile tour to promote their man, caravanning from Vermont (Coolidge’s home state) to California from early September into the first week of November, ending just before the election. Traveling to around three hundred cities and towns, the bicoastal tour would stop for boisterous rallies highlighted by speeches from local dignitaries on behalf of the GOP ticket; and aging Civil War veterans who had actually voted for Abraham Lincoln were called upon to sign a movable guest roster, thus drawing the direct connection between Silent Cal and the Great Emancipator.
Not surprisingly, the Republican Party and Coolidge ran a careful campaign that highlighted the strong national economy and Coolidge’s experience as president as well as a former governor. Coolidge’s laconic style proved to be an asset in the end, as “Silent Cal” measured his comments well. As was his custom, Coolidge was careful not to engage in any mudslinging, kept his remarks to the issues, and upheld his reputation for concise speech. Davis was a dignified candidate and, like Coolidge, well regarded as a man of integrity, but he was not viewed as inspired or inspiring; even within his own party, his campaign appeared bland. Perhaps the most notable aspect of his campaign was his eagerness, now that the campaign was clear of the convention, to openly face down the Klan, but it was not enough when running against a president who was at that moment regarded as largely successful. That perception was reinforced by an economic boom that was currently under way, a factor that typically makes incumbents virtually invulnerable to even the most compelling challenger.
Without a unifying theme or defining slogan, the Democrats were unable to sustain a credible challenge against the solid Coolidge. La Follette only added to their troubles, drawing more votes away from them than from the Republicans (a reversal of 1912) and even showing better than the Democrats in twelve states on Election Day, all in the West or the Midwest.
On Election Day, the president won the popular vote by a firm majority, taking over 15,700,000 votes (54%), which converted to 382 votes in the Electoral College. Davis won just under 8,400,000 (around 29%), a margin of victory for Coolidge of 25 percent, just shy of the record set by Harding four years earlier. Coolidge swept the northeastern and western states (not counting Texas, which in 1924 was still more properly considered as within the Southern bloc; and Oklahoma, which can be characterized, as Texas is now, as both southern and western) and won every state in the Midwest except Wisconsin, which rejected both major parties and went with native son La Follette, giving him 13 votes in the Electoral College. Davis won the Southern bloc, where he enjoyed huge majorities (e.g., an astonishing 96% in South Carolina, a state that in recent years put up numbers ranging between 93% and 96% for Democrats Alton Parker, William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and James Cox, and where only 1,100 voters cast their ballots for Coolidge in 1924; 89% in Mississippi; 76% in Louisiana; and 74% in Texas and Georgia) but could not gain a single electoral vote beyond the South (other than Oklahoma, where he did manage to win with a plurality), finishing with a national tally just under 8,400,000 (just slightly below 29%, the worst showing for a Democratic candidate in history and historically the second worst for a candidate from one of the two major parties, behind only Republican incumbent President William Howard Taft, with 23%, in 1912) among the popular votes for a total of 136 electoral votes. Davis’s feeble showing in the West negated his strength in the South: in North Dakota, for example, only 7 percent of the electorate supported him; while California, which had been so evenly divided between the two major parties in the recent past, barely gave Davis 8 percent, the state of Washington scarcely over 10 percent, South Dakota 13 percent, and Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming around 16–19 percent. Davis’s best showing in the West was in New Mexico, where he managed to win the easternmost counties (nearer to Texas) and finished with 43 percent of the popular vote statewide, but he still well short of Coolidge by 5 percentage points. Davis also suffered huge losses in the Midwest, gaining only 6 percent in Minnesota (his worst showing in any state—and if you combine Minnesota and North Dakota, two bordering states in which he won less than 7% of the vote, Davis’s popular vote total in those two states was around 70,000), 8 percent in Wisconsin (where La Follette beat Coolidge as well), 13 percent in Michigan, and 16 percent in Iowa. Following the pattern set in Harding’s victory in 1920, in most western states, Davis failed to win even one county. La Follette’s 13 electoral votes were accompanied by nearly 5,000,000 popular votes, or 16 percent, which in terms of percentage is an impressive figure for a third-party candidate (exceeded only by former presidents who had returned to challenge the field, viz., Theodore Roosevelt’s 27% in the 1912 Bull Moose campaign and Millard Fillmore’s 21% in 1856, and not counting the splintered four-way Campaigns of 1824 and 1860).
The landslide, although not as impressive as Harding’s in 1920, was just as complete. Coolidge ran an effortless campaign, steadily keeping his cool while Democrats undermined their campaign with internal division, the odor of burned crosses, and, eventually, disinterest. Upon his election to a second term, Silent Cal would continue on as the leading American political figure of the Roaring Twenties.
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