President Warren G. Harding was America’s 23rd president. Harding won the presidency by the largest landslide of votes up to that election. His popularity throughout his first term was apparently relatively high. By the untimely end of his Presidency, he was viewed by most historians as one of the worst, if not the worst, president in American history; and that was what we were taught in high school civics class. Given the performances of several of the 40+ presidents of the United States we have had throughout the history of our country until recently, this was no small achievement.
The truth is that Harding’s Administration became the standard for bad government, against which each succeeding presidency has been compared. And it is now most likely that the administration of Bush 2 (George W.) has surpassed the Harding Administration’s ranking as the worst and most corrupt administration in American history. In this category, George W. Bush is #1.
Just to remind you, Harding and his inner circle of cronies were responsible for quite a list of failings in his 2+ years in office: sex scandals (aside from his affairs, Harding fathered a child while he was a married sitting president); drugs (several references to “white powder” as well as alcohol use in the midst of Prohibition days that banned the sale of alcohol to the public), violence, considerable corruption, cronyism and even murder. One newspaper wrote: “The country that held its breath over the death of the president was now holding its nose over the stench of corruption.”
President Harding became the presidential nominee on an umpteenth ballot during the Republican National Convention in the summer of 1920. He was far from anyone’s first choice but the factions, developed during the nominating process supporting the leading candidates, became deadlocked uncompromisingly in the convention and, after many votes, the delegates turned to Harding as the “dark horse” candidate. He became the Republican Party nominee after being selected in a “smoke-filled” room of party moguls.
After a couple years in office, Harding died during a trip across the country, called “Voyage of Understanding” in August 1923. He made the trip to Alaska and the Inland Passage, where he allegedly had some bad food and was felled by food poisoning during a speech in Seattle on the way back to Washington, DC. Attending doctors disagreed on cause of death in a hotel room in San Francisco.
Considerable controversy prevailed about the premature death of Harding in late summer 1923, a controversy that lasted ‘till the Stock Market crash in October 1929. Some at the time felt that the president’s wife had ‘done him in’, because of the Teapot Dome and other scandals that were about to emerge because of the activities of his political cronies.
In her autobiography, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt) wrote of Harding in her autobiography, “He was not a bad man. He was just a slob.” Really, Harding was manipulated by a set of “handlers” who abused his trust in them. In fact, Harding’s father once suggested, “people could play Warren like a fiddle” (e.g., he had no backbone).
Fast forward to 2010. Today, Harding can rest in peace, because a growing number of Americans no longer consider him to have been the country’s worst president. That title seems to have been captured by President George W. Bush.
Harding had selected members of his administration who were at both extremes: honest as best as could be found and corrupt to the Nth degree. They included both the best of minds and the worst of character. For example, Herbert Hoover was an honest man while his Attorney General Dougherty — the guy who got Harding into the White House — was a major crook. His Secretary of the Interior was also bad news (Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico). There was an article written about “The Fall of Albert Fall” referring to him as “the member of Harding’s Cabinet whose life read like a dime-store novel.”
In this regard, both Bush and Harding were alike: they appointed cronies to various positions in their administrations, whose myopic and egocentric views of the world the presidents apparently accepted.
And then there are Supreme Court justice appointments to compare: Harding appointed such notable Supreme Court justices as Felix Frankfurter and Charles Evans Hughes. Bush has Chief Justice Roberts and Samuel Alito Jr. Bush had tried get his White House counsel and friend (!), Harriet Meirs, onto the Court. Her name was withdrawn under pressure from his own Republican Party as a poor choice for such a high position. Bush, like Harding, was loyal to his friends — usually to a fault.
By early 1923 Harding realized that some of his appointees (several of whom were his poker-playing, whiskey-drinking buddies) were unsuited for their government positions, because they were involved in illegal and unethical activities (corruption, bribery, influence peddling, the selling off of government materials as war surplus). They had also set in motion the now infamous oil-related Teapot Dome scandal that enabled the government’s oil reserves in Wyoming (VP Cheney’s home state) to be stolen and sold for personal gain). In summer of 1923 Harding became distraught and decided to clean up his administration.
The Teapot Dome scandal would have been Harding’s political downfall, had he not died before it was exposed to the public. Thus, for both Bush and Harding “oil” issues have tainted their administrations with many people thinking that the Bush-Cheney team invaded Iraq for reasons related to oil. One major difference, though, is that Harding appears to have been oblivious to the dealings of the people around him; that was the opposite case for Bush.
Harding is the apparent author of the phrase “It’s not my enemies I have to worry about. It’s my friends”. He uttered this statement, once he learned about the corrupt practices of several of his crony appointees.
Bush on the other hand was in sync with the views of those around him, knowing that there have been obvious exaggerations and distortions of information on which his policies were based (such as persistent belief to this day in their claims about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and about Saddam’s close ties to al-Qaida).
Bush’s image began to deteriorate at an accelerated pace, in the first year of his second term. He has been exposed as a failure in office by the inappropriate appointment of his cronies, such as Michael Brown. He appointed his Yale school chum as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Brown, with the backing of Bush, managed to mismanage FEMA’s response to the devastating human impacts of Hurricane Katrina, America’s costliest “natural disaster.” This plus the near destruction of the American economy, the rampant greed on Wall Street and the bungling of various aspects of the war in Iraq and the lack of focus on Afghanistan among other poltical and military screw-ups has helped Bush to deserve the title of the worst president in US history.
The following is a list comparing Bush to other presidents. The list was compiled by a political writer (http://hnn.us/articles/5019.html).
“Bush as president has been unique in his failures.” The George W. Bush presidency is the worst…
• In terms of economic damage, R. Reagan.
• In terms of imperialism, T. Roosevelt.
• In terms of dishonesty in government, R.M. Nixon.
• In terms of affable incompetence, W.G. Harding.
• In terms of corruption, U.S. Grant.
• In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, C. Coolidge.
• In terms of personal dishonesty, W.J. Clinton.
• In terms of religious arrogance, W. Wilson.
Obviously, an objective evaluation of the Bush Administration, without the subjectivity many of us have today, will be recorded by historians. But, from my perspective Bush seems to have earned the dubious honor of being No. 1 in the list of worst American Presidents. Rest in Peace, Warren, you are now #2.
