Long: Elections come, elections go, and the world keeps spinning
By the time you read this, the various elections will be over and perhaps winners known. But as I write, it's all up in the air. So I will follow my usual pattern in this space and ignore uncertain current events; instead looking backward for some historical context. Let's travel back in time a century to the election of 1924.
The incumbent president was Calvin Coolidge, and he had been given the Republican nomination with little dissent. He had been in office for only a short while. President Warren Harding had died the year before, and VP Coolidge ascended to the office, sworn in by his father in a small Vermont farmhouse with no electricity — the Veep was there to help his family cut hay.
Now he would run for his own complete term as president, though by most accounts he didn't seem to like the job very much. But it was to Coolidge's credit that he largely escaped the taint of scandal that engulfed his predecessor's administration. Honest, forthright, and with a strong sense of justice, Coolidge brought a sense of integrity back to the White House. He goes down in history as "Silent Cal" for his taciturn ways; he was indeed (by choice) a man of few words, seldom feeling it necessary to explain himself. Historian Paul Johnson called him a "minimalist politician;" he never in his career employed a press secretary. We might find it strange, but after the recent campaigns isn't there something a little refreshing about a politician with a closed mouth?
Coolidge's running mate, Charles Dawes, was also an intriguing character. A retired brigadier general, he would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his role crafting the Dawes Plan, which helped Europe recover from the cataclysm of World War I. He was also an accomplished musician/ composer, who wrote a piano piece that, decades later, would become the melody for the Tommy Edward's hit "It's All in the Game." What other vice president has ever had a number one pop hit?
The Democrats nominated John W. Davis of West Virginia, a highly capable attorney who had been a congressman, solicitor general of the United States, and an ambassador. He was a compromise candidate, nominated on the 103rd ballot when the two better known contenders finally bowed out — seemingly because many state party budgets were being depleted by staying at the lengthy convention in New York City.
Interestingly, the election of 1924 has been called the "High Tide of American Conservatism" largely because both major candidates embraced a philosophy of limited government, fiscal restraint, free trade, law and order, and individual freedoms. They were both, in a word, Jeffersonians. Probably never in American history have there been two competing candidates with political philosophies so much alike. Interestingly, Davis would in a few years be a critic of the New Deal; Coolidge didn't live to see Roosevelt's first term but certainly would have opposed much of his agenda if he had, and if he chose to say anything at all about it.
But voters were given a choice. Republican Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin ran on a third-party ticket as a Progressive, advocating, for instance, nationalization of the railroads. LaFollette (who had very impressive hair) embodied the idea catching on in both parties that modern times required an expansive governing philosophy.
Ultimately, the election was a landslide for Coolidge, giving him 54% of the popular vote and more than 70% of the Electoral College. While Davis carried the south (then solidly Democratic) and LaFollette took his home state of Wisconsin, the rest of the nation went for Silent Cal. He would go on to preside over a full term of general (but not universal) prosperity and stability; guided by his belief that government, other than enforcing law and order impartially, should pretty much just stay out of the way. But in 1928 he opted not to run again, announcing his choice with typical reticence: by simply passing out a typewritten note to reporters and taking no questions.
His successor, Herbert Hoover, is, to say the least, much less fondly remembered; and the subsequent presidency of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and '40s fundamentally redefined the presidency, the role of the federal government, and the art of electoral politics. So I doubt we'll see the likes of Coolidge and Davis ever again.
Any lessons for today? Maybe most important is this: elections come, elections go, and however the votes are reckoned the world keeps on spinning.
Long is a historian, writer and educator from Salem.
