Teddy Roosevelt and Bob LaFollette patch up their differences for the 1920 election campaign. LaFollette agrees to run on the Republican ticket with Roosevelt in return for inclusion in the Republican platform progressive policies on worker's compensation, minimum wages, and railroad rate reform.
Republican, Theodore Roosevelt/Robert LaFollette 298
Democrat, James Cox/Franklin Roosevelt 149
Independent Republican, Calvin Coolidge/Charles Dawes 84
Teddy Roosevelt therefore is returned to the Presidency after 11 years. True to his progressive agenda, and in keeping his agreement with his Vice President, Bob LaFollette, he runs an administration marked by bold and sweeping changes.
Tragically, President Theodore Roosevelt, already in failing health after the rigorous 1920 campaign, dies of a coronary embolism in his sleep, while at his home in Oyster Bay, New York, on January 6, 1923, at 3:47 A.M.
Vice President Robert LaFollette, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a speaking engagement, is immediately awoken from his sleep, and informed of the passing of the President. LaFollette takes the oath of office as the thirtieth President of the United States at 4:39 A.M., administered by a local judge. The new President immediately returns to Washington, where he is sworn in again the following day by the Chief Justice of the United States, William Howard Taft.
Interestingly enough, Taft, a former President of the United States himself, was nominated as Chief Justice by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1921.
President LaFollette carries on with the progressive agenda begun by President Roosevelt.
At the Republican National Convention in 1924, in return for the Presidential nomination going to LaFollette, 1920 Independent Presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge is named as the Vice Presidential candidate.
LaFollette and Coolidge go on to win a landslide victory in 1924 over Democrats John William Davis, a former Congressman from West Virginia, and Charles W. Bryan, Governor of Nebraska, and a younger brother of perennial Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan.
President LaFollette dies of cardiovascular disease in Washington in the early morning hours of June 18, 1925, two and one half years after first being sworn in as President on that cold Michigan morning on January 6, 1923.
Vice President Coolidge is visiting at his family's home in Vermont, still without electricity or telephone, when he gets word of LaFollette's death. Coolidge's father, a notary public, administers the oath of office in the family's parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp, at 4:47 A.M. on June 18, 1925, and Calvin Coolidge becomes the nation's thirty first President. Coolidge is sworn in again by Chief Justice William Howard Taft, upon his return to Washington, the following day.
