Calvin Coolidge photo

Excerpts of the President's News Conference

November 04, 1924

PRESS: What are your plans for this afternoon?

PRESIDENT: None, except what I have every day—to do the work that comes to my desk here. Of course, in the evening I shall receive the returns over in the White House as they come in. I don't intend to sit up very late about it.

PRESS: How late?

PRESIDENT: Well, I usually go to bed about 10 o'clock, though for the last two or three nights it has been much later. I didn't wake up until 8 o'clock this morning, so perhaps that will entitle me to stay up later tonight.

* * * * * * *

I don't know that there is any comment that I can make on the election or the campaign that isn't perfectly obvious to all of you. I have conducted a campaign that I think will not leave me anything to be sorry for, whether I am elected or not. I don't know of anything in the conduct of the campaign that I have been responsible for for which I shall have to make any apology. I have been very much pleased with what has appeared to be the high plane on which my party have presented their case to the American people, the freedom from expenditure of large sums of money, and on the publicity that has been given and the care taken in relation to the collections and the expenditure of the campaign funds. They have at all times been under the supervision of chartered public accountants, so that practically on a minute's notice the National Committee were ready to have a certified oath-bound statement made in relation to the election expenditures by disinterested and chartered public accountants. I don't think a campaign was ever before conducted in that way. From all the indications that have come to this office I think the result of the efforts on our part are going to meet with success. A part of that success is due to you gentlemen who are here in the room and have done more to interpret me and my policies to the country than I could do myself.

Source: "The Talkative President: The Off-the-Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge". eds. Howard H. Quint & Robert H. Ferrell. The University Massachusetts Press. 1964.

Calvin Coolidge, Excerpts of the President's News Conference Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/349077

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