Calvin Coolidge

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the thirtieth President of the United States (1923–1929). He was elected as the twenty-ninth Vice President in 1920 and succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of Warren G. Harding on August 2, 1923.

He was elected in his own right to a full term in 1924 against Democratic candidate John W. Davis and Progressive candidate Robert M. La Follette. He gained a reputation as a small-government conservative.

Before his presidency, Coolidge was an attorney. He served as governor of Massachusetts from 1916-1919, a governorship most notable for its response to the Boston Police Strike. Coolidge's public statement that "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time" made him a star among the country's conservatives.

He is the only POTUS to have been born on the Fourth of July.

Calvin Coolidge in Southern Victory
Calvin Coolidge was a Democratic politician in the early 20th century. He served as governor of Massachusetts in the 1910s and 1920s, and was elected to the presidency in 1932. He holds the distinction of being the only man elected President of the United States but never inaugurated.

A veteran of the Great War, Coolidge rose to prominence during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts during the 1920s. In 1928, he was the Democratic Party's nominee for president. However, as United States had been immensely prosperous under the administration of Socialist President Upton Sinclair, Coolidge was readily portrayed another regressive Democrat. Despite Coolidge's promises to keep the Confederate States in check, his lack of accomplishment outside of Massachusetts worked against him. Although he carried all six of the New England states (including his home and birth states of Massachusetts and Vermont), Kansas, Montana, Kentucky, Idaho, Nevada, and Houston, he was defeated narrowly by the incumbent Vice President, Socialist Hosea Blackford. When Coolidge called Blackford to concede, however, he expressed his belief that the bull market would not last, and that Blackford would face a difficult presidency when it finally crashed.

History proved Coolidge correct. The stock market crash came three months into Blackford's term. Blackford struggled unsuccessfully with the resulting depression, but the American people's faith in him and his party quickly eroded. Further sinking Blackford's presidency was the Pacific War with Japan, which broke out in 1932, just before elections.

Against this backdrop, the Democrats nominated Coolidge as their candidate for a second time in 1932. Coolidge's platform of discontinuing Blackford's costly and ineffective economic programs and a vigorous prosecution of the Pacific War handily won him and his running mate Herbert Hoover the election. Unfortunately, Coolidge did not live to take office. President-elect Coolidge was in Washington, DC when he suffered a heart attack while shaving and died on January 5, 1933 at the age of 60, just under a month before his inauguration on February 1. Coolidge's term was served by Hoover.

See also Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work