November 4, 2024: The 1924 Election: Harding’s Shadow

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

On how theHarding administration’s scandals expanded in the year after his death, and howthey didn’t ultimately matter much in the election.

Beginning withthe 1840 election and WilliamHenry Harrison’s particularly abrupt death just one month after hisinauguration, and continuing through the 1960 election and theKennedy assassination, every twenty years the president who triumphed in thatcampaign ended up dying while still in office. The majority of those deathswere due to assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy), butthere were also three who died of natural causes: Harrison in 1841, FDRin 1945, and, on August2nd, 1923, Warren Harding from what was likely cardiacarrest but was called at the time a cerebral hemorrhage that had followed an“acutegastrointestinal attack.” Harding was on atrain and boat trip across the Western U.S. at the time (known by theevocative name the Voyageof Understanding), and apparently sometime in the course of the trip askedhis Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (who laterwrote about the conversation) what a president should do if is he aware ofa scandal inside his administration that has not yet come to light.

Accordingto Hoover, he advised the president to publicize such a scandal; we’ll neverknow if Harding would have done so had he lived, but one thing is for certain:major scandals related to his administration did indeed emerge in the year afterhis death, amidst hisformer Vice President and newly sworn-inPresident Calvin Coolidge’s reelection campaign. The most prominent suchscandal was TeapotDome, which involved illicitly awarded leases to federal lands; investigationsbegan two months after Harding’s death and continued into early 1924, withHarding’s Secretaryof the Interior Albert Fall eventually serving prison time for his role. Justa couple months later, the Senate voted to open up another investigation, thistime into Harding’s Attorney GeneralHarry M. Daugherty; those investigationsbegan in March 1924 and continued for the next few months, eventuallyresulting in the conviction of and prison time for another former Hardingofficial, AlienProperty Custodian Thomas W. Miller (although Daugherty escaped with a hungjury). Those weren’teven the only scandals, but they were more than enough to dominate headlinesfor much of 1924.  

You’d thinkthat those election-year scandals would have affected Calvin Coolidge’s campaign—hehad been part of the Harding administration (it’s second-highest rankingofficial, no less), had assumed the presidency upon Harding’s death andmaintained much of the administration’s structure, and was running forreelection amidst all these stories about his former boss’s multi-layered corruption.At the very least, you’d think he’d have to constantly distance himself fromHarding, as AlGore did from Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal throughout the 2000campaign. But from what I can tell, Harding’s scandals were largely treated bythe press as separatefrom Coolidge and his campaign, and they don’t seem to have significantly shiftedtheeventual voting patterns (which closely mirrored the 1920 election, with athird-party thrown in about which I’ll write more in a couple days). Part ofthe reason is likely that the economy was in very good shape, which always benefitsan incumbent seeking reelection. But I’d say it also reflects an early 20thcentury reality that has changed drastically in the last 100 years—that vicepresidents were seen as quite distinct from the president (as we'll see in tomorrow's post as well), and given space todefine their own campaign as a result.  

Next 1924contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this one you’dshare?