History

Warren G Harding

Warren G. Harding was the 29th President of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1923. He is known for his campaign slogan "Return to Normalcy" and for his administration's involvement in several scandals, including the Teapot Dome scandal. Harding's presidency was marked by economic prosperity but also by corruption and controversy.

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4 Key excerpts on "Warren G Harding"

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A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover
- Katherine A.S. Sibley(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell
  (Publisher)
The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times .New York: McGraw-Hill.
Russell, Francis. 1978. “The Shadow of Warren Harding.” The Antioch Review 36(1): 57–76.
Russell, Thomas H. 1923. The Illustrious Life of Warren G. Harding: Twenty-Ninth President of the United States: From Farm to White House . Chicago: Thomas H. Russell.
Sinclair, Andrew. 1965. The Available Man: The Life Behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding . New York: Macmillan.
Trani, Eugene P., and David L. Wilson. 1977. The Presidency of Warren G.Harding . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
White, William Allen. 1928. Masks in a Pageant . New York: Macmillan.
Wood, Clement. 1932. Warren Gamaliel Harding: An American Comedy . New York: William Faro.

The Jazz Age President

Defending Warren G. Harding

Ryan S. Walters(Author)
2022(Publication Date)
Regnery History
(Publisher)

THE SCANDALS

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my friends… they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor nights!”

—Warren Harding

P resident Harding had his fair share of political enemies, as every high official does, but even some of Harding’s harshest critics recognized his better qualities as the economy continued to improve into 1923 and national tempers calmed. For a political enemy like William Allen White, a self-professed Roosevelt Republican, to compliment Harding at all was remarkable, and yet White admitted that “it was evident that the man tremendously desired to do what he regarded as the right thing”—though what Harding and White considered “the right thing” could differ widely. But even doing “the right thing” caused trouble for Warren Harding, as 1923 turned into a nightmare year for the president.

President Harding was responsible for everyone he appointed to office. Although he made some very wise choices, some turned out to be not quite so judicious. “Had Harding appointed a dozen Mellons, he would have been remembered as a great president,” wrote Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, “but he did not, of course, and many of his appointees were of less than stellar character.” Of this there can be little doubt. Herbert Hoover noted that, for all his good choices and good qualities, Harding “had another side which was not good.” Hoover was referring to some Harding appointments that brought shame and disrepute on the president and the country. Hoover was also upset that Harding had weekly poker games with some of these men, which he said “irked me to see… in the White House.” In 1923, about the time some of the scandals became known to him, Harding stopped those poker games and even quit drinking.1

In the end, it was a few of his friends who deceived him. “The President had been betrayed,” wrote Agent Edmund Starling. “Harding was ruined by his friends, just as Wilson was ruined by his enemies.”2 Alice Roosevelt Longworth was a bit less charitable, but she wrote in the same vein, saying that the scandals were “the result of electing to the presidency a slack, good-natured man with an unfortunate disposition to surround himself with intimates of questionable character to whom he was unable to say no, friends who saw financial opportunities for personal power ripe for the picking and were unscrupulous in taking advantage of the weakness of character of the President.”3 But Harding was not truly weak. As Starling noted, his problem was that “he trusted everyone,” probably too much, and that brought on the trouble, as a few of his friends obviously did not hold him in the same regard he held them. His unscrupulous associates took advantage of his kindness by helping themselves to as much loot as they could get. But there was no way for Harding to know that those he chose for office, many of whom were close friends, would deceive him, which is precisely what happened.4

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Difficult Reputations

Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial

Gary Alan Fine(Author)
2014(Publication Date)
University of Chicago Press
(Publisher)

23 He told White that “I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God-damn friends, White, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!” (Barber 1972:191). President Hoover noted:

Here was a man whose soul was being seared by a great disillusionment. We saw him gradually weaken not only from physical exhaustion but from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he had trusted, by men who he had believed were devoted friends. . . . That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding. . . . But these acts never touched the character of Warren Harding. He gave his life in worthy accomplishment for his country. (Blanchard 1931:47)

Harding could have been defined as victim and martyr. Yet the solidification of Harding’s role as a machine politician (the Ohio Gang, the smoke-filled room) made such a defense implausible and ineffective. While his defenders claimed that Harding tried to be a good president, they were unable to create a reputation of a strong charismatic leader betrayed by evil men.

Rather than defending the administration, many Republicans admitted the scandals, but strategically localized them by blaming Fall and Daugherty (Russell 1968:623). Secretary of State Hughes struck a defensive tone in his eulogy at a joint memorial service of Congress held in early 1924:

We, who look on with critics’ eyes, Exempt from action’s crucial test, Human ourselves, at least are wise In honoring one who did his best. (Murray 1973:102)

Similarly, in his keynote address at the 1924 Republican convention, Theodore Burton dealt directly with the scandals (“unworthy motives and grasping avarice”), while insisting that the corruption did not affect the ability of Coolidge to lead the nation (Fuess 1940:344). Without a sustained attempt to preserve the memory of Harding, his public stock sank lower and lower. With popular volumes presenting a lurid account of his affair with Nan Britton (Britton 1927) and fantastic claims that he had been murdered (Means 1930), Harding’s place in history was solidified.

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Accidental Presidents

Eight Men Who Changed America

Jared Cohen(Author)
2019(Publication Date)
Simon & Schuster
(Publisher)

53 This stress would grow over time and eventually take such an emotional and physical toll that it would kill him before the end of his first term in office. His vice president, Calvin Coolidge, found himself an accidental president left to pick up the pieces with less than a year to run for election as president in his own right.

“Return to Normalcy”

The 1920 presidential election offered an opportunity for America to reset. World War I had occurred and the Senate’s veto of Woodrow Wilson’s international adventures with the League of Nations reflected the overall mood. The cost of war in dollars and lives left America with a significant burden at home. President Wilson, who had suffered a debilitating stroke in October 1919, could barely function, leaving the executive branch paralyzed.54 Not since James Garfield lay bedridden for three months had the government been held hostage by a president’s extended illness. But differently from 1881—when the country was at peace and Congress was in extended recess—there were an infinite number of urgent matters that needed Wilson’s attention.

To paraphrase several biographers of the times, there was a lot going on: Common economic woes—runaway inflation, business failures, mortgage foreclosures, and reduction in wages55 —were part of the problem. But trends in urbanization and immigration were also having a profound impact on the country’s economy. For the first time in history, more Americans resided in urban areas, most in cities along the East Coast and in the Midwest.56 The economy struggled to keep pace with such rapid trends, which led to a high cost of living and widespread unemployment.57 Such economic hardship manifested itself in discontent within the labor force and record numbers of strikes, more than 3,600 in 1919 alone.58

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Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.

Warren G Harding

4 Key excerpts on "Warren G Harding"

A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover

Further Reading

The Jazz Age President

Defending Warren G. Harding

Difficult Reputations

Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial

Accidental Presidents

Eight Men Who Changed America

“Return to Normalcy”