Coolidge, Calvin (1872–1933)

CALVIN COOLIDGE, the self-effacing governor of Massachusetts, was elected vice president under Warren Harding in 1920. The Harding administration moved into the White House at the beginning of Prohibition, and was plagued by scandals, many still unresolved when Harding died in San Francisco at the end of a presidential tour to Alaska in the summer of 1923.

Whereas Harding had been the choice of the Republican Party bosses and Senate leaders, Coolidge won popular support from the floor of the Republican convention, despite party leaders. To the rank and file delegates, Coolidge seemed an honest, decent, intelligent-minded, and even energetic governor who had few connections with the “smoke-filled rooms and fat cat bankrolls” But in an age of machine politics, Coolidge himself had risen to prominence in Massachusetts under the aegis of the Massachusetts Republican machine. He later prided himself on being “unbought and unbossed.” Harding had brought Ohio cronies to Washington, D.C. including his political mentor, party boss Harry Daugherty, whom Harding appointed attorney general. In the midst of Prohibition, alcohol-fueled White House poker evenings were notorious. Corruption brewed in Daugherty's Department of Justice, the Bureau of Investigation, and the Treasury Department.

Charles R. Forbes, director of the Veterans Bureau under Harding, had been caught selling supplies, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that the government had allocated for the military and veterans' hospitals to private contractors. Harding allowed Forbes to leave the country to escape prosecution, but his general counsel at the Veterans Bureau, Charles Cranmer committed suicide while under investigation, as did Jess Smith, a key member of the Ohio gang and assistant and roommate to Harding's long-time friend, Attorney General Daugherty, after Harding discovered evidence that he had been engaged in influence peddling.

In addition, there were the lingering effects of the Teapot Dome scandal, which focused on Harding's secretary of the interior, former New Mexico Senator Albert B. Fall. The new president appointed two special counsels to investigate the Teapot Dome scandal. Fall was accused of leasing Naval Petroleum Reserves in California and at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to oilmen Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, receiving $400,000 dollars in return. Prior to the complete unraveling, Fall had gone through what became a common revolving door to a highly paid position with Sinclair's oil company.

Realizing that most of the scandals emerged from the office of the attorney general, Coolidge moved carefully, but finally found an excuse to have Daugherty resign when he refused to provide Justice Department documents requested by a Congressional investigating committee. Thus, through deft political maneuvering, Coolidge had largely defused the Harding scandals in time for the presidential campaign of 1924. Fall, finally convicted of bribery, went to jail, as did Forbes (who had returned to face his own investigation and prosecution). Daugherty was formally censured by the Senate, although his criminal involvement was never conclusive.

Coolidge was nominated to the Republican ticket on his own account, and was easily elected in a three-way race with Democrat John W. Davis and Robert M. La Follette running as a Progressive. Americans were satisfied with Coolidge's pledge of a “return to normalcy.”

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