Warren Harding - 100 years

[President Johnson]

Just realized today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Warren Harding. While often labeled as one of the worst presidents, I don't think he was Pierce/Fillmore level bad. Certainly below average, especially due to the countless scandals in his administration. He still won the higherst vote share of any non-incumbent, 60.3%, in 1920.

[OSR stands with Israel]

He should not be considered a bottom 10 President. Bottom 10 Presidents imo are:

Buchanan
Pierce
A. Johnson
Hoover
Hayes
Fillmore
Trump
Carter
W
Tyler

[President Johnson]

He should not be considered a bottom 10 President. Bottom 10 Presidents imo are:

Buchanan
Pierce
A. Johnson
Hoover
Hayes
Fillmore
Trump
Carter
W
Tyler

I'm surprised you put in Dubya here.

Otherwise I agree other than Carter.

[OSR stands with Israel]

He should not be considered a bottom 10 President. Bottom 10 Presidents imo are:

Buchanan
Pierce
A. Johnson
Hoover
Hayes
Fillmore
Trump
Carter
W
Tyler

I'm surprised you put in Dubya here.

Otherwise I agree other than Carter.

W is probably my favorite person to be president in my lifetime but results are results and the results he had does put him here . If it wasn’t for Jan 6th , I’d probably say W was the worst Republican president in the modern age (Post WW2) given just how disastrously he not only handled foreign but policy but how incompetent he was in that regard too .

I honestly think though if W knew what his presidency would have to deal with , he would not have run to begin with because W was clearly planning to be a domestic policy president rather than a foreign policy one which is why he gave Cheney so much free reign in that regard .

[SWE]

There's really no way to argue he's a bottom 10 president. At bare minimum, he's clearly not as bad as Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Bush II, and Trump, and depending on your ideological persuasion, it's really hard to imagine someone who can't come up with 3 more presidents who they consider more harmful than Harding, even if there might be some disagreement as to who that should be.

[Podgy the Bear]

For those who like to read presidential biographies, it's worth getting a copy of The Shadow of Blooming Grove, written by Francis Russell in the late 1960s.  Russell was the journalist who largely revealed the evidence of love letters from Harding's longstanding mistress.  The book provides a thorough and descriptive writing of Harding's life and Ohio politics in the early 20th century.  The information on Harding's 1920 presidential campaign and the 1920 Republican convention makes for captivating reading.

Today, Harding is seen as a non-intelligent, unknown tool by establishment Republicans of that era to foist their policies on a pliable public.   The reality is that he was a well-respected newspaper publisher in his region.  He was very involved in both state and national Republican politics and was well liked by both Democrats and Republicans. 

He had progressive views on racial policies and civil rights for that era (far more than Woodrow Wilson--who probably set back racial relations many years).  Some of that was likely political--he had received nearly 40 percent of the vote in the South in 1920, and if he could get increased black vote participation, the Republicans could carry the rest of the South in future elections (he did win Tennessee that year). 

And he was able to get the American economy back on track fairly quickly after WWI and significant inflation followed by a deep recession largely due to Federal Reserve rate hikes (read your American history, Jerome Powell!!!).

Harding was no scholar, and he had significant personal faults.  And perhaps his biggest drawback was that he was too trusting of people--which inevitably resulted in Teapot Dome and other scandals.  You have to place him as below average--but not at the level of Andrew Johnson or James Buchanan.  And definitely not Donald Trump--where he will likely plummet to the bottom once he and his supporters are finally gone and an objective assessment can be made.

[Sir Mohamed]

There's really no way to argue he's a bottom 10 president. At bare minimum, he's clearly not as bad as Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Bush II, and Trump, and depending on your ideological persuasion, it's really hard to imagine someone who can't come up with 3 more presidents who they consider more harmful than Harding, even if there might be some disagreement as to who that should be.

Yup, it's quite possible Coolidge did more harm in the end than Harding.

[OSR stands with Israel]

There's really no way to argue he's a bottom 10 president. At bare minimum, he's clearly not as bad as Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Bush II, and Trump, and depending on your ideological persuasion, it's really hard to imagine someone who can't come up with 3 more presidents who they consider more harmful than Harding, even if there might be some disagreement as to who that should be.

Yup, it's quite possible Coolidge did more harm in the end than Harding.

Eh that lets Hoover of the hook quite a bit . Hoover’s response to the 1929 crash is why we got mired into the depression rather than the 1929 crash itself .

Keep in mind Hoover decided to let the banks fail during the banking crises of 1930(which is when things really started to get bad ) , it was his decision to appoint someone who believed in a hard money monetary policy to head the federal reserve and it was his decision to sign Smoot-Hawley .

[AtorBoltox]

I think Harding's reputation as a bottom 10 president was largely formed during the 40s and 50s as people rightly viewed the American move to isolationism as a mistake