Coolidge Wins Election -- November 4, 1924
On November 4, 1924, Calvin Coolidge was elected President of the United States. Vice President Coolidge had assumed the office of the presidency the year before after President Warren Harding died. But Coolidge then had to convince the American public to elect him President in his own right.
Coolidge had little time to enjoy his new job as President before he had to begin campaigning to keep the position. Indeed, at the time of Harding's death in August 1923, the President was just nearing the end of his two-month trip across the country designed to repair his and his party's image before the 1924 presidential campaign. Initially, winning the election seemed a daunting task for Coolidge, who four years earlier had gained the Republican vice presidential nomination only after party delegates clashed over more favored candidates. Although a man of few words, Coolidge was an astute politician who by the time he became vice president in 1920 had served as an elected official for more than two decades from city councilman to governor of Massachusetts. More importantly, he remained extremely popular with the American public during this time. Coolidge epitomized the honest, hard-working, and business-minded attitude that promised to streamline government and rid Washington of the corruption and scandals bred during Harding's administration.
Coolidge's campaign differed little from the "Return to Normalcy" heralded by Harding four years earlier. On the two most controversial issues, Prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan, Coolidge said little. His platform of lower taxes and smaller government resonated with the American people. Coolidge also used the new medium of radio very effectively in what was an otherwise uneventful campaign. Virtually inventing the press conference, Coolidge held 520 during his five and a half years in office, cultivating a genial relationship with the press with his dry wit and wry humor. By November 1924, he was the favorite, and his easy victory – 382 electoral votes (15.7 million popular votes) to Democrat John Davis's 136 (8.4 million) and Progressive Robert La Follette's 13 (4.8 million) – surprised few. Four years later, weary of the office, Coolidge famously declined nomination for a second elected term by calling a press conference, but taking no questions from reporters. He simply handed out strips of paper to those present that read, in classic Coolidge style, "I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight."
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