Matters of Fact in Fiction

At the 1920 Republican National Convention, delegates nominated Warren G. Harding, the poker-playing Ohio senator, to be their presidential nominee. He won that election on a promise that America would “Return to Normalcy.” Two-and-a-half years into his term, Harding was dead, and his running mate, Irvine Lenroot ascended to the presidency.

Lenroot had been chosen for the ticket because he did not offend any particular faction of the Party. During the League of Nations debate, he gained prominence as an intermediary between the Mild Reservationists and Lodge, and he was respected by the progressive wing of the Republican Party.

After ascending to the presidency, Lenroot – who had by then abandoned the prospect of the United States entering the League of Nations – began fixated on the brewing crisis in Germany. Earlier that year, French and Belgian occupied the Ruhr after Germany defaulted on its World War I reparation payments. Lenroot was concerned about the issue and convened a World Conference to try and address the situation. No nation was willing to assume the German war debt or otherwise meaningfully help Germany, suffering under the strain of the Treaty of Versailles. 

The conference produced no meaningful changes for the German people and instead only complicated Lenroot’s efforts to win renomination in the ‘24 election. William Borah challenged Lenroot at the Convention on an isolationist platform, asserting that he was the rightful heir of Harding’s “Return to Normalcy” promise. Neither Borah nor Lenroot emerged the winner. The Republicans instead nominated Herbert Hoover, who went on to leave office in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression after two terms in office.

Of course, Harding’s actual running mate was Calvin Coolidge, who was famously sworn-in by his own father after word of the president’s death reached the Coolidges in Vermont. Coolidge was less involved in foreign affairs than Lenroot would have been, and although he was not particularly celebrated in his times, Coolidge was embraced by the right for his fiscal conservatism in later years.

Lenroot was widely seen as the runner up to the vice presidential nomination.