29. Warren Harding

Harding is consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. He was a very successful self-made newspaper publisher from Ohio. Once he entered politics he served in the Ohio senate, as Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator from Ohio. In spite of whatever preparation he had for the office of the president even in his day he was not well thought of. His one shortened term in office was overtaken by multiple scandals involving some of his closest advisors and friends.

I would bet that if you ask an average American what they know about Warren Harding you would get one of four responses.

1. “Who?”
2. “Didn’t he die in office”
3. “Wasn’t there a scandal involving teapot’s”
4. “Wasn’t he the president with the middle name Gamaliel”

When Harding was almost ten years old his father, George, bought a small newspaper. By the time he was in his teens Harding had learned how to handle simple printing jobs and could run a small printing press. After college Harding returned to Marion, Ohio and with two other partners bought the smallest of the towns newspapers, the Marion Star. By the time he was twenty-one he had made enough money to buy out his partners. Eventually his paper became so popular that the other papers couldn’t keep up and went out of business. Harding became active in many aspects of the town and his reputation grew:

• Member of the Chamber of Commerce
• A 33-degree Mason
• An Elk
• A Rotarian
• Played Coronet in the town band
• Managed the town baseball team (also playing 1st base)

While he popular with most of the people in Marion, he had repeated run-ins with one of the wealthiest men in town; Amos Hall Kling. Many of Harding’s political views that he published put him at odds with some of the political establishment including Kling. The relationship with Kling was not improved when in 1891 Harding married Kling’s daughter Florence. Kling started up a rival newspaper to try in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Harding’s newspaper. In 1900 Kling secretly bought up all of Harding’s debts and called them due. Harding was able to raise the funds from other sources and paid the debts. The two were eventually able to get passed their differences.

Using the editorial pages of his newspaper to support various Republicans around the state brought Harding appreciation within the party. In 1887 Harding became a delegate to the Ohio State Republican Party Convention. Finally in 1900 he won his first political office by being elected to the Ohio State Senate. He served two terms in the State Senate and went on to become Lieutenant Governor. Losing a bid for Governor Harding returned to Marion and the work of the newspaper.

In 1914 Harding won a U.S. Senate election and spent six fairly undistinguished years in the Senate. For the most part he voted lock-step with the Republicans and didn’t introduce any important legislation. He voted for prohibition even though he was against it, he believed that the people of Ohio were in favor of the amendment. Not believing that the time was right for woman to vote, he still voted for the bill. He was definitely with the Republicans in their opposition to the League of Nations, especially a provision that seemed to commit American forces to support any other League member that was attacked.

Harding was convinced to run for president in 1920 by Harry Daugherty. Daugherty would goon to be Harding’s campaign manager and eventually his Attorney General. Once Harding was convinced, Daugherty went to work trying to secure the Republican nomination. Harding came in fourth on the first ballot at the convention. General Leonard Wood was the favorite, but couldn’t secure the required majority of votes. Republican leaders locked themselves away in a “smoke-filled room” (Room 404 of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago) to decide who was the best compromise candidate. After an all-night session the tentative decision was made to nominate Harding. Harding was approached the next day and told about the decision, but was asked if there was anything in his past that could be a problem. In spite of rumors of adultery, Harding replied that there was nothing he could think of that could cause problems.

Harding won the general election with over 60% of the popular vote promising a “return to normalcy” after WWI, an economic downturn and eight years of a Democrat in the White House. When he started filling his cabinet he made some selections based on merit and some based on personal friendships. The three selections based on friendship would end up defining his administration and his legacy. Unfortunately not for the positive.

Before I get into the scandals, there were major positive thing that Harding accomplished. He signed into law the Budget and Accounting Act which, in part, requires the president to submit a budget to congress. It created much stricter accounting rules and made the presidential budget director accountable to the president and not the Secretary of the Treasury. The second was the creation of the Bureau of Veteran Affairs.

Harding did not agree to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations and so he negotiated a separate peace with Germany and Austria finally bringing an official end to WWI. After the war he supported a broad reduction in naval power globally.

His old friend Harry Daugherty (the same man that convinced him to run for president) was made the Attorney General. In his position at the Justice Department Daugherty accepted bribes to grant immunity to people that illegally sold alcohol. He also accepted bribes from wealthy federal prisoners to grant them paroles. When this all came to light Daugherty tried to put the blame on his personal assistant, Jess Smith. Smith ended up committing suicide. Daugherty was ultimately acquitted after two trials.

The next scandal involved a friend named Charles Forbes at the Veteran’s Bureau. Forbes was convicted of selling off government medical supplies and taking kick-backs for approving new VA hospitals. When Harding confronted him Forbes fled to Europe. He ultimately returned to the U.S. and was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, becoming the first former cabinet member to go to prison.

The biggest scandal did not fully come to light until after Harding died. This scandal involved Albert Fall at the Department of the Interior. The Teapot Dome scandal, as it has become known, involved the illegal leasing of federal oil deposits. The oil reserve had been set aside for use by the navy in case of an emergency. There were two locations involved, one in California and one in Wyoming. The one in Wyoming was covered by a rock formation that looked like a teapot, giving it the name Teapot Dome. Fall was convicted of defrauding the government and sentenced to jail time.

Harding once said “I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, they’re the ones keeping me walking the floors as night.” The scandals were clearly taking a toll on Harding. A western trip was planned and Harding became the first president to visit Alaska (at that time a territory). On the trip home Harding fell ill in Seattle. His personal doctor determined that it was food poisoning and would not let any other doctor examine him. Several other doctors were convinced that Harding had suffered a heart attack. Harding died in San Francisco on August 2nd, 1923. His term in office was the shortest of any 20th century president.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t discuss the extra-marital affairs. Harding carried on at least two long affairs and it’s rumored there were two more. The longest one involved a young girl named Nan Britton that Harding met back in Marion when she was a teenager. When Harding moved to Washington he helped find her a job. There is a story about an encounter with Nan in a closet off the Oval Office with the Secret Service standing by to keep Harding’s wife out. Four years after Harding’s death Nan wrote a book claiming that Harding was the father of her child. The other affair went on for fifteen years with the wife of a good friend.

Talking about a president’s legacy is always subjective, but Harding’s term can’t be discussed with the scandals. While there was never any indication that Harding was complicit in any of the scandals (there were more than the big three) he did create an environment where he trusted his cabinet members to manage their departments without any oversight. When rumors about the scandals started Harding was slow to react.

Trivia:

• First sitting United States Senator to be elected president
• First (maybe only) newspaper editor to be elected president
• He was obsessed with playing poker and once bet (and lost) a complete set of priceless White House china
• First president to give a speech over the radio
• First president to own a radio
• First president to ride to his inauguration in a car
• He was the first president for whom woman could vote
• His mother held a medical license
• It’s rumored that his great-grandmother was African-American (this was brought up several times during his political career)
• He literally worked to preserve the Constitution by having it removed from the files of the State Dept., where it had been rotting, and had it placed in a protective glass case
• Harding won in 1920, a year that saw six past or future presidents running for either president or vice president; Harding, Wilson, Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Hoover.
• The election of 1920 was the first to be carried live on the radio
• First president born after the Civil War

Vital Stats:

• Wife: Florence Mabel Kling (1860-1924, m. 1891)
• Children: None legitimate, one or two rumored illegitimate.  Florence had a son from a previous marriage. 
• Party affiliation: Republican Party
• Presidency: 1921-1923
• Born: November 2nd, 1865 (Blooming Grove, Ohio)
• Died: August 2nd, 1923 (San Francisco, California)