PBrunsel
Junior Chimp
Posts: 9,537
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« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2007, 05:49:59 PM » |
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“I sometimes can not comprehend that I am President,” Warren Harding stated in 1922, and he believed it. Yet another Ohio dark-horse for the GOP, Harding was in over is head as President, but did make several wise decisions while in office. His term in office is controversial, yet Harding did some good as President. The road to the White House began for Harding was he was a young man, and perhaps he would have been happier selling newspapers.
At the age of 17 Warren Harding and some friends bought “The Marion Star”, a bankrupt newspaper in his hometown of Marion, Ohio. After marrying Florence DeKling (who was a financial genius) Harding was able to make the paper a success. A political boss named Harry Daugherty decided to take Warren under his wing when his daughter saw Harding and thought he, “Looked like a President should look like.” Harding rose like a phoenix in Ohio politics. He became a State Senator, the Lieutenant Governor, and in 1914 he was elected Senator.
In 1920 many thought Harding could be the Republican nominee for Vice-President. Theodore Roosevelt, the presumptive nominee, had decided on Harding as his number two man, but Teddy died in 1919. The divided GOP had no front-runner when they convened in Chicago. Daugherty knew Harding would be the nominee, and after meeting in a “smoke-filled room” with Republican leaders, Harding emerged as the compromise choice on the 14th Ballot. “Americans needs not nostrums, but normalcy,” Harding said upon accepting the nomination. Harding ran as a pro-business and anti-progressive reform Republican completely out of the mold of Teddy Roosevelt. He opposed entry into the League of Nations and nearly everything Wilson stood for. Harding won 60% of the vote on November 2nd, 1920, and became the only President to be elected on his birthday.
Hardin’s Presidency has been generalized as a “failure”. This is a lie. Harding made many positive decisions as President which affects the United States today. In 1921 he signed the Budget Act which required the President to submit a federal budget to Congress. He tried to address the problems of returning veterans by creating the Bureau of Veterans’ Affairs which is the mother of today’s Department of Veteran’s Affairs. He pardoned many of Wilson’s frees speech prisoners, including Eugene Debs, the Socialist who ran for President from jail. Harding addressed the Congress on several occasions to cut taxes, end high war time rail rates, end the excess tax, and regulate the radio. All these things were done by the time Harding passed away in 1923.
The second most important thing that Harding did as President was that he appointed several wise and capable men to his Cabinet. His Secretary of State was Charles Hughes, who helped work out the 1922 Washington Naval Conference which reduced navies and ended the naval arms race. Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace worked to bring down the war time taxes on grain and corn. Above all, his energetic Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover did the most. Hoover standardized all parts, organized radio frequencies, and eliminated much waste in government and in the business world. Hoover, Hughes, and Henry were three great cabinet members, and Harding deserves his accolades for appointing them.
Finally, Harding became the first president since Grant to address civil rights on Southern soil. In 1921 he told an audience in Birmingham, Alabama, that Black Americans deserved the same rights as White Americans. He came out swinging against lynching, the poll tax, and other forms of terror against Black Americans. No President until Truman would say so much in respect to Civil Rights.
Just like Buchanan and grant before him and Truman after him, Harding trusted his friends a little too much when it came to dishing out the jobs. His old pal Daughtery was appointed Attorney General, and got busy taking bribes. After making Harding bet the White House china in a poker game, Daughtery resigned his job due to being caught in a bribery scandal. Albert Fall, Interior Secretary, sold Tea Pot Dome, Wyoming, to an oil company for $500,000, and was arrested and given time in prison. “There are only three men who have betrayed their chiefs,” Harding said, “One was Judas, the other two are mine.”
Perhaps it was Harding’s somewhat lazy lifestyle that both did in his administration and himself. He slept profusely and loved to have three hour dinners, yet hated to sit behind his desk and work. To call Harding lazy is unfair; he actually kept a very active schedule. Every morning he would play tennis, croquet, and ping-pong. In the afternoon he would walk around the White House shaking hands with visitors. After dinner he had a nice glass of illegal alcohol (18th Amendment and all) and rode around D.C. on a horse shaking hands with everyone he met. This lax work schedule allowed Harding to let scandals go on under him, and in the end he died of a heart attack in San Francisco due to a stroke.
After Harding died the American people compared him to Lincoln and Washington. It wasn’t until the Tea Pot Dome Scandal and the arrest of Albert Fall came around that people turned on the late President. All things considered Harding had an above average presidency. He did a lot of good, and made the one of two classic blunders; the first is never get involved in a land war in Asia. The second is never appoint people you know from playing poker to important government jobs.
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