My Amazon Review of David Pietrusza's "1920: The Year of Six Presidents"

 

A Rocky Road to Normalcy

 

1920 was quite a year. The 18^th Amendment (prohibition) was enforced, the 19^th Amendment was ratified (Women’s Suffrage), the Palmer raids against radicals continued, the Ku Klux Klan was revived, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for murder, and the North discovered there was a large African American population living in its major cities as a result of the wartime demand for labor. Into this hothouse comes the 1920 presidential election.

 

Author David Pietrusza highlights the role of six presidents who played key roles in that year’s election. First there is Theodore Roosevelt who in late 1918 after Republican congressional victories became the odds-on favorite for the nomination. Unfortunately, he dies in early 1919 and his chosen successor General Leonard Wood fails to win the Republican nomination. Then there is President Woodrow Wilson who was ready to run for an unprecedented third term but was incapacitated by a stroke that enabled his wife Edith to become the de facto president. We see young and charismatic Franklin Roosevelt advancing to become the Democratic nominee for Vice President. Before that he was talked about running for Vice President under Herbert Hoover on the Democratic ticket.

 

Of course, Hoover would ultimately acknowledge that he was a Republican. Hoover was extraordinarily popular in his role to feed famine struck Europe and even Keynes noted that Hoover was one of the few people who came out of the Versailles Conference with an enhanced reputation.

 

On the Republican side we see the very amiable and very flawed Warren Harding win the nomination under the aegis of his corrupt campaign manager Harry Dougherty. Harding’s affairs and illegitimate children would have made Bill Clinton blush. In a multi-ballot affair, the Republican leadership settles on Harding in the famous Room 404 of the Blackstone Hotel which forever after would be called the smoke-filled room. When a delegate from Oregon nominates Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge for Vice President a genuine stampede on the floor of the convention leads to his nomination. Coolidge is known for breaking the Boston police strike in 1919.

 

The Democratic Convention is also a multi-ballot affair that leads to the nomination of Ohio governor James Cox, a favorite of the big city bosses. Unlike the Republican Convention the Democratic bosses left no tracks. Ironically both Harding and Cox are newspaper publishers from the same state. Nevertheless, the decision of the voter in November was clear. Both Harding and the Republicans in congress won a blowout victory. One of Harding’s first acts is to pardon Socialist candidate Eugene Debs who was serving in prison, an act that Wilson refused to do.

 

Where Pietrusza is acute is his character sketches of the book’s major protagonists. Wilson is a stubborn old man, Harding is in way over his head, Hoover, though brilliant is cold and austere and Coolidge, though quiet is a dedicated public servant. This book is a great read for political junkies. I learned that the Republicans put a mild anti-lynching plank written by the NAACP and that the seeds for Roosevelt’s 1932 run were planted in 1920 where he collected the names of leading Democrats throughout the country during his vice-presidential campaign.

For the full Amazon URL see: A Rocky Road to Normalcy (amazon.com)