WI: Coolidge/Harding 1920

I don't disagree. I think the economy would have been better off if he stuck to the Coolidge policies (then again, Coolidge was overly fond of tariffs, and a tariff war was a large part of the Depression). But FDR still was able to outflank him on the left. Thats my point: that Hoover got the worst of both sides.
If he had stuck with the Coolidge policies, there wouldn't have been a depression.
 
For me, the first interesting twist is dealing with the Theodore Roosevelt problem. Without his death, I see him casting a huge shadow over 1920. Given that Harding was the candidate of the smoke filled room of Republican bosses, I can certainly see Coolidge taking the nomination. I wanted to ask aloud that if you have Coolidge as the nominee could he have chosen Wood as his running mate to bring back the Progressive Republicans to the fold. I wonder if Cox would have picked FDR as his running mate in 1920 with Wood as Coolidge's running mate.
Do you mean Leonard Wood?
 
Not to be picky, but if TR didn't die in January 1919 and had been alive / well (there's some room for interpretation there) at the time of the 1920 GOP convention, all bets are off. He'd be the prohibitive favorite to be the nominee, in which case Coolidge's nomination is a non-starter (at best, Silent Cal might wind up with a lesser cabinet post; Harding wouldn't even merit consideration of any sort for any post). I may be wrong, but I thought the original premise of this thread was the tacit assumption that TR had passed on as IOTL, and that things went differently at the 1920 convention...?
 
Not to be picky, but if TR didn't die in January 1919 and had been alive / well (there's some room for interpretation there) at the time of the 1920 GOP convention, all bets are off. He'd be the prohibitive favorite to be the nominee, in which case Coolidge's nomination is a non-starter (at best, Silent Cal might wind up with a lesser cabinet post; Harding wouldn't even merit consideration of any sort for any post). I may be wrong, but I thought the original premise of this thread was the tacit assumption that TR had passed on as IOTL, and that things went differently at the 1920 convention...?


Actually Harding, a Midwesterner who had been a Regular in 1912, would have been an obvious choice to balance TR's ticket.
 
I'd forgotten that there had been some off-the-cuff discussion when TR tried to get a volunteer forces bill through Congress in 1917 (I think): namely, that Harding would introduce and back such a bill; allegedly, in the heat of the moment, TR spoke enthusiastically about Harding as a future running mate at the time.

Now, whether or not that would have been borne out in a more sober moment in 1920 is up for grabs, but I have to wonder if TR would have stood still for a running mate around whom as many rumors (some black ancestry-proved unfounded-and a mistress/illegitimate daughter-generally credited as true although long afterward) swirled as Harding. Certainly TR was a reasonable if not quite astute judge of character, plus he had the perspective that at any moment the vice president could be called upon to step in. As such, I submit he'd want a running mate in whom he'd have some confidence that the job would be carried out competently--and I doubt upon sober reflection he'd have that confidence in Harding. Someone like Lowden or Lenroot, no question, but not Harding.
 
Who would become Secretary of State, would it still be Hughes in a Coolidge '20 scenario?

I think there would still be an attempt at some form of naval treaty regardless, although butterflies alone might cause it to be quite different, or maybe fail completely.
 
Who would become Secretary of State, would it still be Hughes in a Coolidge '20 scenario?

I think there would still be an attempt at some form of naval treaty regardless, although butterflies alone might cause it to be quite different, or maybe fail completely.
Hughes as SecState seems likely here: he wasn't a candidate for the presidency in 1920 given the recent passing of his daughter.

On a just-for-grins basis, how's this for a Coolidge-appointed cabinet:

State: Charles Evans Hughes
Treasury: Charles Dawes
Justice: Elihu Root
War: Leonard Wood
Interior: William Sproul
Agriculture: Frank Lowden
Commerce: Irvine Lenroot
Labor: James Davis
Postmaster General: Hubert Work
 
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