Henry Cabot Lodge and other prominent Republicans urged Charles Evans Hughes to make himself available for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920 in case the front-runners Lowden and Wood deadlocked--as they did. But Hughes officially took himself out of the race in April 1920 when his twenty-eight-year-old daughter Helen died of tuberculosis. He even refused Will Hays' request to keynote the 1920 convention for fear that if he were to deliver a sufficiently inspiring speech, there might be a movement to draft him. http://books.google.com/books?id=Uia4A04q8dMC&pg=PT110
Suppose Hughes' daughter had not died, and without campaigning in the primaries, Hughes would not rule out a draft. People like Lodge did not want to see Harding nominated, but in OTL they had no strong alternative left after Wood and Lowden became deadlocked--Hiram Johnson was detested by Easterners and conservatives, Knox was from a safe Republican state (and, like Johnson, was perhaps too unequivocal in his opposition to any sort of league of nations), Hoover was tainted by his association with Wilson, etc. Hughes of course had the disadvantage of having lost in 1916, yet as Bryan, Dewey, Stevenson, and Nixon show (just to confine it to 1900 and later--there are of course earlier examples going back to Jefferson) losing a presidential election does not always prevent getting a later nomination. Besides, the Republicans would have good grounds to believe that many 1916 Wilson voters would show "buyer's remorse."
If nominated, Hughes would win overwhelmingly in November, given the huge unpopularity of Wilson. What would a Hughes administration be like? Presumably most of the scandals of the Harding administration won't take place. (It is not *totally* inconceivable that Hughes will name Albert Fall Secretary of the interior--Fall as a Westerner popular with conservatives and a Spanish-American War veteran did have some things going for him--but he was not a friend of Hughes' as he was of Harding's. And certainly Harry Daugherty isn't going to become Attorney General.) As for the substance of policy--it might be more "progressive" than that of Harding and Coolidge, but maybe not very much. Despite Hughes' background as a moderately progressive governor of New York, he was sufficiently conservative during the 1916 campaign that William Allen White complained, "He talked tariff like Mark Hanna. He talked of industrial affairs like McKinley, expressing a benevolent sympathy, but not a fundamental understanding. He gave the Progressives of the West the impression that he was one of those good men in politics—-a kind of a business man's candidate, who would devote himself to the work of cleaning up the public service, naming good men for offices, but always hovering around the status quo like a sick kitten around a hot brick!" http://books.google.com/books?id=KM4cAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA4-PA50
Three other questions:
(1) Who would his running mate be? A Hughes-Coolidge ticket would mean two Northeasterners. In traditional political terms, it would make more sense to provide geographical balance with someone from the Midwest or West. But in OTL the delegates insisted on Coolidge when the "senatorial clique" tried to foist Senator Lenroot of Wisconsin on them, and they might do so in this ATL also.
(2) Who will Hughes appoint as Secretary of State? My guess is Elihu Root. (Frank Kellogg, leader of the "mild reservationists" in the League fight, is another possibility.)
(3) Assuming Hughes is re-elected in 1924--and there seems no reason to think he won't be, especially given the divisions within the Democratic Party--who will his successor be in 1928? That may partly depend on whether he has a vice-president (e.g., Coolidge) popular enough among conservatives to be a serious rival to Hoover (who I assume will serve in his Cabinet and do as efficient a job as he did under Harding and Coolidge) about whom some of the Old Guard still harbor some misgivings.
Suppose Hughes' daughter had not died, and without campaigning in the primaries, Hughes would not rule out a draft. People like Lodge did not want to see Harding nominated, but in OTL they had no strong alternative left after Wood and Lowden became deadlocked--Hiram Johnson was detested by Easterners and conservatives, Knox was from a safe Republican state (and, like Johnson, was perhaps too unequivocal in his opposition to any sort of league of nations), Hoover was tainted by his association with Wilson, etc. Hughes of course had the disadvantage of having lost in 1916, yet as Bryan, Dewey, Stevenson, and Nixon show (just to confine it to 1900 and later--there are of course earlier examples going back to Jefferson) losing a presidential election does not always prevent getting a later nomination. Besides, the Republicans would have good grounds to believe that many 1916 Wilson voters would show "buyer's remorse."
If nominated, Hughes would win overwhelmingly in November, given the huge unpopularity of Wilson. What would a Hughes administration be like? Presumably most of the scandals of the Harding administration won't take place. (It is not *totally* inconceivable that Hughes will name Albert Fall Secretary of the interior--Fall as a Westerner popular with conservatives and a Spanish-American War veteran did have some things going for him--but he was not a friend of Hughes' as he was of Harding's. And certainly Harry Daugherty isn't going to become Attorney General.) As for the substance of policy--it might be more "progressive" than that of Harding and Coolidge, but maybe not very much. Despite Hughes' background as a moderately progressive governor of New York, he was sufficiently conservative during the 1916 campaign that William Allen White complained, "He talked tariff like Mark Hanna. He talked of industrial affairs like McKinley, expressing a benevolent sympathy, but not a fundamental understanding. He gave the Progressives of the West the impression that he was one of those good men in politics—-a kind of a business man's candidate, who would devote himself to the work of cleaning up the public service, naming good men for offices, but always hovering around the status quo like a sick kitten around a hot brick!" http://books.google.com/books?id=KM4cAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA4-PA50
Three other questions:
(1) Who would his running mate be? A Hughes-Coolidge ticket would mean two Northeasterners. In traditional political terms, it would make more sense to provide geographical balance with someone from the Midwest or West. But in OTL the delegates insisted on Coolidge when the "senatorial clique" tried to foist Senator Lenroot of Wisconsin on them, and they might do so in this ATL also.
(2) Who will Hughes appoint as Secretary of State? My guess is Elihu Root. (Frank Kellogg, leader of the "mild reservationists" in the League fight, is another possibility.)
(3) Assuming Hughes is re-elected in 1924--and there seems no reason to think he won't be, especially given the divisions within the Democratic Party--who will his successor be in 1928? That may partly depend on whether he has a vice-president (e.g., Coolidge) popular enough among conservatives to be a serious rival to Hoover (who I assume will serve in his Cabinet and do as efficient a job as he did under Harding and Coolidge) about whom some of the Old Guard still harbor some misgivings.
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