From the “Just In Case You Didn’t Know” Department . . .
Remember this?
He wasn’t the first . . .
From “The Teapot Dome Scandal,” by Laton McCartney, page
247:
In the national campaign, the Democrats as well as the newly
formed Progressive Party, which put forth La Follette and Walsh’s protégé
Burton Wheeler as its presidential and vice-presidential candidates,
respectively, hammered away at Teapot and the Republicans without much effect.
Davis, Al Smith, Walsh, and others (the showman Wheeler debated an empty chair
on which he asked his audience to imagine President Coolidge was seated) tried
to get Coolidge to respond to charges about the scandal, but “Silent Cal”
remained entirely mum, refusing to take the bait.
The Republicans won the election, just so ya’know. Coolidge
took 382 electoral votes and the popular vote, of 15.7 million. Democrat John
Davis of West Virginia got 136 electoral votes on a popular vote of 8.3
million, while Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, who ran on the Progressive
Party (Teddy Roosevelt Progressives of the Republican variety) earned 13
electoral votes on a popular vote of 4.8 million.
This stunt alone inspires me to read more about America’s
“Progressive Era,” where the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
Woodrow Wilson (presidents all) were joined by authors like Upton Sinclair,
industrialists like Andrew Carnegie (!) and Thomas Alva Edison, members of the
Womens’ Suffrage movement (Susan B. Anthony) to combat problems stemming from
industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government.
Sound like familiar troubles, eh?
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