Longtime Coolidge friend Frank Stearns writing to Calvin Coolidge: August 8, 1927.

Stearns comments on Coolidge’s decision not to run for President in 1928. On August 2, while on vacation in South Dakota, Coolidge called an impromptu press conference at his Summer White House office in the Rapid City Central High School. The president then handed out slips of paper to the assembled reporters on which were written: “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight.” When asked if he had any further comment, Coolidge said, “No” and left the office. The Washington Post reported the next day, “There are few things within reason that Mr. Coolidge could have done which would have caused more complete surprise here than his brief announcement today. It is safe to say that no single person with him had the slightest inkling of what was going to happen.”

 Some Americans assumed Coolidge might yet run. The president was so popular that most Americans assumed Coolidge would win if he did choose to run. A “draft Coolidge” campaign was initiated. But Coolidge stood firm by his decision not to run.

In his Autobiography, Coolidge says, “the Presidential office is of such a nature that it is difficult to conceive how one man can successfully serve the country for a term of more than eight years” and that “an examination of the records of those Presidents who have served eight years will disclose that in almost every instance the latter part of their term has shown very little in the way of constructive accomplishment.” Coolidge closes his Autobiography with a happy reflection: “It was therefore my privilege, after seeing my administration so strongly indorsed by the country, to retire voluntarily from the greatest experience that can come to mortal man. In that way, I believed I could best serve the people who have honored me and the country which I love.”