The American Presidential Election of 1928

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The 36th episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1928, the economy is still ridiculously strong, and Herbert Hoover has all the momentum in the world.

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The 36th Presidential election in American history took place on November 6, 1928, the day I turned negative 53. Calvin Coolidge had a smooth second term. The economy remained strong, and the federal government even had a huge surplus. If he wanted to run for another full term, he probably would have been easily re-elected. However, Coolidge had announced the previous summer that he had no intention of running by cutting out strips of paper with the statement, “I do not choose to run for president in 1928” on them, and handing them out to reporters at the press conference. Coolidge said after the slips of paper were handed out, “There will be nothing more from this office today,” and he walked out.

So this left the Republican nomination wide open. The leading candidates were Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce, Frank Orren Lowden, the former governor of Illinois, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis, who was from my home state of Kansas. Not impressed by these choices, many Republicans tried to draft Coolidge, but Coolidge turned it down. Hoover ended up getting the nomination, with Charles Curtis as his running mate.

The Democratic Party nominated Al Smith, the governor of New York who was running for President a third time. Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be a major party’s candidate for President. The Democrats nominated Joseph Taylor Robinson, a U.S. Senator from Arkansas, as his running mate. Robinson and Smith seemed like the odd couple, but actually complimented each other well.

No third parties really stood out during this election at all, and so we had another class two-way battle. Hoover had the momentum due to the fact that things were going pretty darn well overall in the country. In fact, at Hoover’s nomination acceptance speech, he said, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land.”

Little did Hoover know that soon those words would come back to bite him in the butt. However, things were looking pretty good for him, especially since Al Smith’s religion became a major issue during the campaign. Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from the Pope if he led the country. In addition to anti-Catholicism, Smith’s opposition to Prohibition and his association with the corruption of Tammany Hall likely would cost him votes.