by Robert Sobel
There was another factor in the equation. Just as the deaths of his mother and sister affected Coolidge deeply, so did that of his stepmother, Carrie, on May 18. She had been married to John Coolidge for almost thirty years, and Calvin Coolidge had been very close to his stepmother. In his Autobiography Coolidge wrote, “I was greatly pleased to find in her all the motherly devotion that she could have given if I were her own son. For thirty years she watched over me and loved me, welcoming me when I went home, writing me often when I was away, and encouraging me in all my efforts.” When she fell ill in 1908, he wrote to his father, “I am a great deal disturbed about mother. Are you sure you are doing all that can be done to help her?” and went on to say, in atypical Coolidge phrases, “Everything that is possible ought to be done to stop her suffering. I am afraid you may not realize how bad she might be.” And now she was dead, and Coolidge might have felt that with her passing, the joys of politics were diminished. It wasn’t the first time a death had caused him to become morose and withdrawn. Nor would it be the last.
Then another of those strokes of luck that often affected Coolidge’s political career appeared out of nowhere. After Roosevelt’s death, several contenders tried to seize his mantle, and their maneuvers, sensible as they might have seemed at the time, hurt them all. Senator Hiram Johnson, the California Progressive who had been Roosevelt’s running mate in 1912, and who was a likely successor, was eager to make the race. He could count on support from former Progressives now returned to the GOP, but for that very reason was anathema to the regulars—they might accept a Roosevelt, with all his glamour and charisma, but no other Progressive. Moreover, Johnson was an ardent isolationist, even more opposed to the League of Nations than Lodge. His harsh, absolutist stand attracted zealots but repelled moderates. None of the bosses was remotely interested in Johnson.
Wood was a more likely surrogate for Roosevelt. A medical doctor who received a regular army commission in 1886, Wood rose to be personal physician to the McKinley family. He became friendly with Roosevelt in 1897; together they organized the “Rough Riders,” in which Wood was the commander, and they fought side by side in Cuba. As Roosevelt went on to become governor of New York, Wood served as military governor of Cuba and then of the Moro Province in the Philippines. From 1910 to 1914 he was the army chief of staff. In 1917 Wood was the army’s senior officer, and normally would have received a command in France, but President Wilson kept Wood stateside, perhaps fearful that Wood—who had sought the Republican nomination in 1916—would ride to the White House on a military victory after the war. Thus in 1920 Wood appeared to many not only as TR’s political heir, but also as Wilson’s victim. Nevertheless, in a time when large numbers of voters had concluded that the United States had mistakenly entered the war, a military man was an unlikely candidate. Besides, Wood gave little indication of having a political agenda, except that he favored universal military service, hardly popular in that period.
At no time during the campaign did any of the newspapers or magazines discuss General Wood’s activities in the strikes of 1919. Because of the scope of the man’s career, these didn’t seem important. Coolidge’s more modest accomplishments were recalled in detail, and his words at the end of the police strike were often repeated. It was the measure of the two men in the context of the nomination period, and indicated not only that Coolidge seemed a minor force with minor accomplishments when placed on the national scene, but also that he was now entering the big leagues of politics.
Just as Johnson appealed to those who cherished Roosevelt’s Progressive agenda, so Wood attracted those who admired the man himself—that is, the more conservative element. Members of this set provided the campaign with lavish financing. Under the leadership of William Procter, who ran Procter & Gamble Company, they formed the Leonard Wood League and hired some of the best political operatives to work on the general’s behalf, including John King, who had been considered a possible manager for the Roosevelt campaign. Because of this, that winter Wood seemed a likely nominee. But the bosses certainly would not support anyone in the Roosevelt tradition, a man who would be independent of them and probably ignore their interests. Indeed, Wood would be even more dangerous than Johnson.
The same might be said for the third major candidate. Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois was a capable, intelligent, and admired individual, who entered politics while administering the estate left to his wife by her father, railroad magnate George Pullman. His record was exemplary, as were his origins. Lowden was the son of a blacksmith born on a farm near Sunrise, Minnesota, but he was hardly a rustic: he erected an estate on six hundred acres in northern Illinois he called “Sinnissippi,” one of the most magnificent country homes in America, open on designated days to visitors. Lowden had entered the House of Representatives in 1906, being named to fill the unexpired term of a deceased congressman, and he served two additional terms. He remained with Taft when the Republican party split in two in 1912 and had urged the party to reunite, and so he was not tainted with the stain of political treason. In 1917 he became the governor of Illinois.
As governor, Lowden streamlined the state government, cut taxes and expenditures, and would leave the state with a $15 million surplus. He doubled aid to public schools, pushed through one of the nation’s major road construction measures, and started work on a waterway to connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. After Chicago was hit by a race riot in 1917, Lowden sponsored legislation to punish racial and religious discrimination. He replaced political appointees with those selected from civil service rolls, and cleaned up a corrupt statehouse. If the nation wanted an honest, efficient, and independent governor, untainted by Washington, Lowden seemed to fit the bill better than Coolidge. Walter Lippmann, who supported the Lowden candidacy, wrote of it in words that might have described a Coolidge race:There is a logic to Lowden, once you grant the premises. He comes from the middle of the country, he stands in the middle of the road, in the middle of the party about midway between Wood of New Hampshire and Johnson of California. He has risen from a farm to an estate, from obscurity to moderate fame, perhaps not quite the darling of the gods but surely one of their favorite sons….
The people are tired, tired of noise, tired of politics, tired of inconvenience, tired of greatness, and longing for a place where the world is quiet and where all trouble seems dead leaves, and spent waves riot in doubtful dreams of dreams….
Lowden is the noiseless candidate in this campaign. I have watched his appeal to the voters. He tells them that he will talk only of prosaic things and he does. He assures them that he will not bother them much as he will not.
Lowden had congratulated Coolidge on his actions during the Boston police strike. He supported Coolidge’s reelection in 1919, warning that his defeat would be “a repudiation of his stand in the Boston riots.” One of his aides suggested the “perfect” national ticket for 1920 would be Lowden and Coolidge—in that order. For Lowden it would draw delegates from New England; for Coolidge, Lowden could be a counter to Wood and Lodge in Massachusetts.
But Lowden, too, had liabilities. He was criticized for living ostentatiously—he seemed to fancy his nickname, “the Squire of Sinnissippi.” He clashed repeatedly with Chicago Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson over patronage and his supposed suppression of antiwar groups. Because of this, he could not expect a united Illinois delegation to support him. Then too—and this was close to fatal—the state bosses didn’t trust Lowden, who was independent and apparently incorruptible. Nonetheless, Lowden may have been the best qualified Republican in 1920, or for that matter, 1924 and 1928, as well.
By late winter there were many more announced or supposed possibilities. Herbert Hoover was a genuine hero of the war, a successful businessman, and better and more favorably known than any of the major candidates. But he, too, was distrusted by the bosses, and he ran an unusually inept campaign. There was Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, the sixty-five-year-old symbol of progressivism; Nicholas Murray Butler, t
he president of Columbia University, and New York’s favorite son; Governor William Sproul of Pennsylvania, another favorite son, who most thought would hold on to the state’s votes—until orders came down from Boies Penrose. As always, there were several very minor candidates representing special causes. For instance, Lucy Page Gaston, a noted anticigarette crusader, entered several primaries, telling reporters that just as Lincoln had freed the slaves, so she would free the nation from the cigarette.
In the spring of 1920, as delegates prepared to go to Chicago for the convention, they continued to wonder whom Penrose would back. The party’s leaders, who had conferred with Penrose in Pennsylvania in 1919 and 1920, knew he was troubled by the lack of a candidate to represent their interests. In the summer of 1919 he considered Harding, and in a private meeting asked him, “Harding, how would you like to be president?” Harding tried to beg off—he liked being a senator and had no ambitions for the White House. In the end Penrose gave up on him. “Harding isn’t as big a man as I thought he was,” he said, after reading a Harding speech. “He should have talked more about the tariff and not so much about playing cymbals in the Marion brass band.”
Probably so. Harding was a genial, friendly, comfortable kind of person; after graduating from Ohio Central College, he became a teacher, studied law, sold insurance, and, eventually, became a newspaper reporter. In 1884 he purchased the defunct Marion Star, which he nursed into a successful publication. Seven years later he married Florence Kling DeWolfe, a divorcee five years his senior, and a domineering woman ambitious for her husband. She nudged him into politics, and in 1899 he was elected to the Ohio senate, where he met Harry Daugherty, his future manager. There followed a reelection to the state senate, a term as lieutenant governor, and failed attempts to win, first, the GOP gubernatorial nomination, and then—finally succeeding in that—the general election for the governorship.
Despite this lackluster record, Harding was selected to place Taft’s name in nomination at the 1912 Republican Convention, and two years later he won election to the United States Senate. Harding quickly became a popular figure in the Senate “club,” and chaired the Republican Convention in 1916. In 1919 he was named to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, though he had no experience or interest in foreign policy. Harding was opposed to the League, in favor of conservative Republican policies, and quite content with his position in life. So, he was reluctant to make the race for president, since if he did he could not also run for reelection to his beloved Senate.
Penrose would have to seek elsewhere for his candidate. He looked favorably at Pennsylvania’s other senator, Philander Knox, who had served as attorney general in the McKinley cabinet, and who had been named to the Senate in 1904. He soon became a member of the GOP inner circle, and was a safe conservative. A few weeks before the convention opened, Penrose met with Knox, and asked whether he would like to be president. Knox pleaded age and ill health, but Penrose persevered. “You won’t need to do much work. We’ll get a good hard-working cabinet for you and you can sit at the head of the table and run the show.” Knox demurred, and did his best to avoid Penrose thereafter, afraid that he might give in.
Penrose let out the word that he was ill and probably would not attend the convention. Later it came out that Penrose was actually close to death at the time, often in a coma, and that the real power over the Pennsylvania delegation was exercised by favorite son Governor Sproul. All the same, everyone seemed to believe that no one could expect the nomination without the support of Penrose and most of the other bosses.
In time the primary system would displace the bosses, but that time was not 1920. That year there were sixteen primaries, starting with New Hampshire in early March, which General Wood won. He did not, however, carry any momentum out of New Hampshire; Hiram Johnson won in North Dakota, even though the delegation included some recalcitrant Wood people. Then came South Dakota. Although South Dakota would send only ten voting delegates to the convention, Wood went there anyway, campaigning throughout the state, followed by Lowden, who hadn’t intended going until Wood filed his papers.
Procter concocted this strategy, which the professionals in the Wood camp opposed. They argued that it was reckless to enter primaries in which favorite sons were running, since this would antagonize them and preclude deals at the convention. But Procter, who had no real idea how the political game was played, argued that if Wood could knock enough of them out of the contest, his resulting popularity would make him unstoppable. A large number of wealthy industrialists backed Procter because they wanted to usurp control of the GOP’s policies and nominees from the party bosses. As it turned out, however, the professionals were right: Wood’s actions in the primaries won him some delegates, but lost him political opportunities to work with the others.
Wood and Lowden advertised lavishly, while Johnson had a much more modest war chest. Despite the efforts of the candidates, through a series of primaries in the Midwest, no candidate emerged as a clear-cut favorite. Indeed, the leading candidates, conducting bitter campaigns, seemed to be canceling one another out.
Ohio was the bellwether state. Favorite son Harding won a close contest over Wood, but the general managed to take several delegates; Harding thus would not come into the convention with a united state delegation, which was traditionally seen as a sign of weakness. Harding was prepared to quit the race and make a try for the Senate, but his campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, talked him out of it. Daugherty told his uncertain candidate, “I think you have the best chance [of winning the nomination].” As Daugherty later recalled, he explained his logic to Harding.
“Neither one of the leading candidates can win. General Wood is backed by a powerful group of rich men who wish a military man in the White House. They are nervous over the social disorders following the World War. They are nervous over the growing demands of labor. They wish to entrench themselves behind the invisible force of the bayonet and the machine gun. The scheme won’t work. The people are sick of war. The boys who saw it in France have begun to tell tales out of school. They hate war to a man. They’ll not vote for a general. The women will vote in the next election. It would be suicide on that account to name a general. The Republican convention will not do it.”
“Money’s a powerful force in our primaries!” Harding sighed.
“That’s so, too. But there’s not enough money in the world to buy the nomination for a man who wears epaulets in 1920.”
“Lowden’s a power to be reckoned with,” Harding suggested.
“Sure. The best man on the list, too. I like him. He’d make a fine president. But he’ll never have the prize or a nomination.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s too rich.”
“Nonsense.”
“Besides, he married Pullman’s daughter. No party will name a railroad magnate for the office of president.”
“Why, he’s a farmer.”
“Yes, but he married into the railroads. He’ll never win. He and Wood will fight each other to a finish and deadlock the convention.”
“Then Johnson may slip in.”
“Never. They’ll say he defeated Hughes in California, and the real Republicans will not forgive him.”3
“Come down to brass tacks,” Harding ordered. “Am I a big enough man for the race?”
“Don’t make me laugh! The day of giants in the presidential chair is passed. Our so-called Great Presidents were all made by the conditions of war under which they administered the office. Greatness in the presidential chair is largely an illusion of the people.”
Daugherty’s analysis was on target. Despite the fact that his own career in electoral politics had been dismal—he had failed to win nomination to the posts of state attorney general, congressman, governor, and three times for senator—he was a skilled political operative.
As expected, favorite son Coolidge won the Massachusetts primary, but Wood took some delegates as well. As with Harding in Ohio, Coolidge’s failure to
carry all the delegates in his home state was a sign of weakness.
Soon thereafter Harding traveled to Boston to deliver an address. In his speech he predicted that Coolidge, who had received only a scattering of votes, would be the eventual nominee. Did this mean he was coming out for Coolidge? “If I lived in Massachusetts, I should be for Governor Coolidge for president. Coming from Ohio, I am for Harding.” The speech won Harding the good will of the listeners. Harding had, of course, gone through New England earlier and had met with Coolidge, which gave Ohio party leader Newton Fairbanks an idea. Writing to a friend, he declared, “The ticket you suggest, ‘Harding and Coolidge,’ would sweep the country like a whirlwind, and reestablish an American government in Washington.”
In the California primary Johnson decisively defeated Hoover, all but knocking him out of the race. Wood, Lowden, Johnson, and Harding contested for Indiana, with Wood winning narrowly over Johnson. Next Johnson captured Oregon, and then North Carolina.
When all the primaries were over, Wood had won 124 delegates; Johnson, 112; Lowden, 72; and Harding, 39; but in the popular votes Johnson had 966,000; Wood, 711,000; and Lowden, 389,000.
In short, there was no clear victor, and plenty of room for deals. Despite Johnson’s popular appeal, he had no chance; the bosses positively despised him, and he returned the feeling. Yet the bosses weren’t particularly enamored of Wood or Lowden, either.
Moreover, the front-runners had conducted such an acrimonious campaign that there was no chance that any two would unite to form a ticket. But Harding, who had angered no one and was in fourth place, was in a good situation for some bargaining. Unlike the others, neither he nor Daugherty had challenged favorite sons or attempted to pressure any of the bosses. The Harding people were perfectly willing to trade favors for votes on second, third, and fourth ballots. Coolidge, and the others who were far behind, had faint hope, since there was the possibility for deadlock. It was all in the hands of the bosses.
