November 4, 1924: Keeping Cool With Coolidge

November 4, 1924, 100 years ago: President Calvin Coolidge, who took the office on the death of Warren Harding the year before, is elected to a full term in his own right. The Republican, who had been Governor of Massachusetts before being Vice President, took advantage of a split in the Democratic Party that nullified a split in the Republican ranks.

The slogan was "Keep Cool with Coolidge" -- alternately, "Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge" -- and the nation agreed. He won 382 Electoral Votes, and 54 percent of the popular vote. John W. Davis, a former Congressman from West Virginia and U.S. Ambassador to Britain, won 136 Electoral Votes, but his 29 percent represents the lowest popular-vote percentage in the history of the Democratic Party. Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, formerly a Republican but now the leader of the Progressive Party, won his home State for 13 Electoral Votes, and took 16 percent of the vote.

Charles G. Dawes was elected to fill the vacancy in the Vice Presidency, caused by Coolidge's ascendancy. A Mayflower descendant, and also a descendant of William Dawes, one of Paul Revere's co-riders, a Chicago utilities executive who had served as Harding's Budget Director.

The following year, his Dawes Plan for easing the payment of war reparations won him the Nobel Peace Prize. He was also a musical composer, and his "Melody in A Major" became popular upon publication in 1912. In 1951, Carl Sigman added lyrics to it, and it became "It's All In the Game." In 1958, black singer Tommy Edwards had a Number 1 hit with it. Dawes is the highest-ranking government official ever to have had a Number 1 hit.

Coolidge had recently lost his 16-year-old son John to an infection that could have been easily treated had antibiotics been invented. He had also recently watched the Washington Senators win the World Series. He did not like baseball, but his wife Grace did.

He was known as "Silent Cal" for his reticence. Legend has it that 2 women, seeing him at a party, made a bet. So one walked up to him and said, "I made a bet with my friend that I could get you to say 3 words to me." And Coolidge said, "You lose."

Even when he decided not to run for a 2nd full term, he was brief: He told the press simply, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928," and walked away. He may have seen the Crash of 1929 coming, and didn't want to get blamed for it. He should be, but he left his successor, Herbert Hoover, holding the bag.

Interestingly, Coolidge and Dawes did not get along, and when it was suggested at the 1928 Republican Convention that Dawes be nominated for a 2nd term as Vice President, along with Hoover, Coolidge stepped in and prevented it, and Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas was nominated instead, a choice both Coolidge and Hoover could live with.

Charles G. Dawes

As a consolation prize, Hoover appointed Dawes to be U.S. Ambassador to Britain. He didn't get along well with King George V, but the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and the Duke of Windsor, liked him. As the Depression kept going, Hoover asked Dawes to come home, and run the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which he did for the remainder of the term. He was offered the Vice Presidential nomination in 1932 and the Presidential nomination in 1936, as a reminder of the "good" Coolidge years, but declined both times. He died in 1951.

Despite Coolidge's landslide, Nellie Tayloe Ross, a Democrat, was elected Governor of Wyoming, to replace her late husband, William B. Ross. She was the 1st woman elected Governor of any State.