Irvine Lenroot Republican candidate for vice-president in 1920

At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Irvine Lenroot, the senator from Wisconsin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Lenroot ) was the choice of the GOP leadership for the VP nomination. However the delegates voted for Calvin Coolidge. If Lenroot had been Harding's running mate in 1920 and elected VP, he would have become President when Harding died on 2 August 1923.

Most likely he would have run for President in 1924 and like Coolidge in OTL have been elected. A plausible running mate would have been William Squire Kenyon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Squire_Kenyon ).

Both Lenroot and Kenyon were on the progressive wing of the Republican Party. Lenroot was a protege of Robert La Follette.

Lenroot would have defeated Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election. How would his policies have differed from those of Coolidge and Hoover? He might have appointed Hoover as his Secretary of the Treasury.

Lenroot would have kept to the two-term convention for American presidents and not run for re-election in 1932. Who would the Republicans have nominated? Possible candidates are Kenyon; Herbert Hoover; Joseph Irwin France, the former senator from Maryland who in OTL ran against Hoover in the GOP primaries but garnered few delegates at the National Convention; Charles Curtis and Charles McNary.

If Lenroot's policies had been more effective than those of Hoover in combating the Great Depression, could a Republican have been elected President in 1932?

Perhaps, with Hoover as SecTreas, and a more progressive Republican in the White House, Henry Cantwell Wallace won't be arguing with Hoover, his son won't blame Hoover for his father's death, and Henry Agard Wallace may stay as a Republican.

I doubt any party in power could survive an economic disaster, even half or a fourth as bad as the great depression That is why I have stopped writing Gore in wins 2000 TLs. Because that would mean Obama would lose in 2008.

Murray Rothbard claims in his book Herbert Hoover's Depression that Hoover must be considered the founder of the New Deal. Other libertarian writers also regard Hoover as paving the way for the New Deal.

In his election campaign in 1932 FDR accused Hoover of "reckless and extravagant spending". See this article: http://www.reason.com/news/show/125921.html.

President Lenroot would not have vetoed the Muscle Shoals bill in 1931. It was designed to dam the Tennessee River and harness energy from it. It laid the basis for the Tennessee Valley Authority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_Shoals_Bill .

He would also have vetoed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill which raised tariffs on 20,000 imported goods to record levels. Also he would have handled the bonus army more sympathetically than Hoover did in OTL.

in OTL FDR gave the American people hope that if elected President he would able to restore prosperity. If the policies of the Penroot administration were able to ameliorate the effects of the Great Depression so that they were substantially less than in OTL, and if the Republicans nominated a candidate who had a greater popular appeal than Hoover had, though FDR would most probably have won, his victory would have been much closer in the electoral vote and the popular vote than in OTL.

John Gilbert Winant, the governor of New Hampshire, would have been an excellent choice for Republican candidate for President in 1932. He was young, only 43 years old, and a progressive. http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/11/john-gilbert-winant.html .

Bump, because I'm having some ideas about this TL: what does Lenroot need to do and to have to prevent the Black Tuesday? If he can't erase it from history, how many years can the Great Depression be moved to...

Just imagine at least...President Huey Long for the 40's