November 5, 2024: The 1924 Election: Three VP Nominees

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

On how three Republican nominees for the Vice Presidency exemplify electoral chaos.

1)      Frank Lowden: Up until the ratification of the 25^th Amendment in 1967, if wasn’t required for a former Vice President and newly sworn-in President like Calvin Coolidge to nominate a new Vice President, and so Coolidge didn’t do so when he ascended to the presidency in August 1923. That meant that for much of 1923 and 1924 Coolidge was seeking the Republican nomination and reelection to the presidency with no Vice Presidential nominee, and thus that the 1924 Republican National Convention in Cleveland needed to name such a nominee alongside Coolidge. Coolidge’s choice was Frank O. Lowden, a former U.S. Representative from and Governor of Illinois who had himself sought the presidency in 1920. But perhaps because he had lost that nomination to the Harding-Coolidge ticket, or perhaps because he had his own future presidential ambitions (and did run again in the 1928 Republican primaries), Lowden turned down the nomination.

2)      Charles Dawes: With Coolidge’s own choice for VP out of the running, the convention delegates as a whole settled on a new nominee, the lawyer and businessman, World War I officer, and Harding administration official (in the role of the first director of the Bureau of the Budget) Charles Dawes. During his time as Coolidge’s VP Dawes would become best known for drafting a WWI reparations plan, known as the Dawes Plan, for which he received the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize. But Coolidge clearly never warmed to Dawes as his VP, as illustrated by the president’s failure to support Dawes’ signature domestic achievement: Dawes championed the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill and helped it pass Congress, but Coolidge vetoed the bill not once but twice (in 1926 and 1927). And when Coolidge announced he would not seek reelection in 1928 and Dawes was rumored as a possible candidate, Coolidge told delegates that he would consider any nomination of Dawes as a personal insult.    

3)      Charles Curtis: Herbert Hoover ended up the Republican presidential nominee in 1928, and Dawes was likewise passed over as a Vice Presidential nominee despite his continued interest in the role. Instead, the Republican National Convention in Kansas City chose Kansas Senator Charles Curtis as Hoover’s VP nominee. The choice of Curtis reflected a second consecutive RNC with a contested vice presidential nomination process that was separate from, and perhaps even more combative than, the presidential nomination. But at the same time, Curtis was a hugely significant symbolic choice—as an enrolled member of the Kaw Nation, he was (and remains to this day) the only Native American ever to serve as Vice President. Another way that the chaos of these 1920s elections mirrors some of the factors that have made our own current campaign and election unusual and groundbreaking!

Next 1924 contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this one you’d share?