Posted on 08/14/2015 10:05:22 AM PDT by NRx
The aura of scandal that has plagued Warren G. Harding, our 29th president, has almost obliterated the substance of the man as a senator and as president. Breaking news that DNA testing may now prove that Harding fathered a child with one of his paramours, Nan Britton, will no doubt play to the stereotype of Harding as a womanizer and reinforce his already miserable reputation as president — a reputation that regularly lands him at the bottom of historians’ lists of our worst leaders.
That’s a shame because, unlike the DNA samples from the Harding and Britton families, the reputation of Warren Harding the man and the record of Warren Harding the Republican politician do not match. At the time of his death, Harding enjoyed tremendous popularity. It was only later, when details of his infidelity scandalized the nation, that his legacy took a nosedive. Our obsession, past and present, with Harding’s sex life has obscured the truth: This man was a good president.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I have long felt that Harding has gotten a bum rap from the usual suspects in academia. My own take is that he was a genial center right president who supported a few moderately progressive (for the time) ideas, but who was also a poor judge of character in some of his appointments. I'd give him a B- for a grade.
I am of course much more a fan of his successor, Calvin Coolidge, whom I regard as the most underrated president in our history.
Shocking from the Compost, but Harding was a great pres. His cabinet was made up of all businessmen. He shaved the debt by 1/3 (along with Coolidge), cut taxes, sold off the RRs, sold off the shipyards, privatized large parts of American business.
Not being Woodrow Wilson was enough to make him popular.
Doesn’t sound like he did anything worse that Bill Clinton with all his ‘women’ ......
‘I did not have ‘relations’ with that woman’ yeah right.....LMAO
So...why WaPo et al and WGH’s dalliances?
Is there a love baby out there for Obama? An abortion for Hillary..Michelle?
Something is up.....there is just no apparent reason for this now. These people just don’t put mindless diversion sh!t out for nothing.
If you can read or borrow the book Coolidge on CD by Amity Shlaes, it is superb.
“Something is up.....there is just no apparent reason for this now. These people just don’t put mindless diversion sh!t out for nothing.”
Clinton.
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1924, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. In 1922 and 1923, the leases became the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Fall was later convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies and became the first Cabinet member to go to prison. No person was ever convicted of paying a bribe, however.
Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the “greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics”. The scandal damaged the public reputation of the Harding administration, which was already severely diminished by its poor handling of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 and the President’s veto of the Bonus Bill in 1922
One should investigate if Moochelle's spawn were fertilized by Barry. Barry is queerer than a three dollar bill.
I stumbled across Harding’s final resting place when I lived in Ohio. Bought something at Sears in the mall in Marion. Came out the door and there it was, just across the parking lot.
There are no photos of Michelle Obama pregnant.
There are no photos of the ‘parents’ with the kids until one child is 3/4 years old and the other a baby.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Could you tell if the bovine princess was pregnant from a photo?
In high school all we were taught about Harding was that he looked Presidential, coined the term “normalcy”, Teapot Dome, Fall & Denby, & that he died in office.
At the time I thought “died in office” meant that he expired right there in the Oval Office.
We heard even less about Calvin Coolidge. Then came FDR & the New Deal & the history book had more text about that than World War Two & the Cold War. Big on the U.N., though.
When they finally met, the aide introduced Rogers to Coolidge, who stuck out his hand. At which point, Rogers said I am sorry....I didn't catch the name
Coolidge lost it & Rogers got his $100.
Women always take pictures when they are pregnant.
That has been my experience, anyway.
The recidivist historians are about to go after Woodrow Wilson big time. Democrats will be shocked that one of their own was a big-time racist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Forbes
He had extremely poor judgement in his appointments.
I think that was the true impact of Harding. I’ve read over six books in the past year of the era...covering Wilson, WW I, the Prohibition episode, Harding, and the entire 1920s. Two were written in the late 1920s/early 1930s. So I’ve had a wide introduction to the guy.
Harding was an ‘accidental’ editor/journalist who simply had enough money to buy a marginal paper and stabilize it. A couple of years would pass, and Harding would marry a woman who was press-savy and knew how to write. So the wife became the business component of the paper and pushed it to be a leader in Ohio matters over the next decade. As much as people might talk up Harding, he was mostly an actor who relied upon his wife, and they were a good team.
At some point, the Republicans in the state felt Harding would make a decent Senator and got him elected. What people will say is that everyone (Republican and Democrat) liked him. What they will also say is that Harding brought several of his friends (cronies might be a better term) with him and poker evenings with ample booze were always a big deal with Senators visiting him for the evening.
Harding’s wife simply looked the other way, and he enjoyed women on the side. Harding’s wife knew that he was handsome and was going places.
By the end of the Wilson era, everyone in DC and the nation were waiting for the ‘Jesus-like’ character to arrive and pump them up. The last two years of the Wilson era were extremely negative and of zero-impact.
Harding walked in and gave a great speech as the new President. Within a month or two....staff members in the WH came to realize that he was mostly just a speech-maker and really didn’t know much about policy. His handlers....the inside crew....the cronies....were the mechanism that made all this work. They took in bribes and ensured things got done.
The tax change? Oh, that happen with the Harding administration but you might as well admit that it would have happened under almost anyone because the original tax program was so screwed up.
Somewhere in the June timeframe of 1923...roughly two years into his presidency....Harding began to realize the amount of corruption and cronyism going on. Several people have written of the period and think that he sink down a couple of notches and got depressed over the whole matter. He not only had to fire these people (something he’d never done ever), but he might have to get a prosecutor involved. We aren’t talking two or three problems....it was probably going to involve a minimum of a dozen people who were his poker-night buddies and inside crew.
I think he came to see his brief two years in the White House as a miserable failure with this much corruption going on and the problem of the Senate digging into this and he might not be able to win in the next election.
So, I’m of the mind that he attempted some marginal suicide on the first episode, then survived. Remarkably, with this trip out to the west coast.....he brought his personal doctor from Ohio who was also a WH insider on the trip....a guy who was not exactly qualified to be a doctor but pretended enough to satisfy people. Either the doctor screwed up enough to cause a second problem to occur, or the wife decided to help Harding finish himself off in the end.
It should be noted that almost all of his internal papers from the 2.5 years were destroyed by the wife. There isn’t that much really known about the day and his inner workings of the White House period. There’s some papers from the Senate period, which help to fill in the holes of his career.
Harding, I think...was a naive guy who knew how to give a good speech....looked presidential....had a business-smart wife to help lift him up, and carry him to the White House. Sadly, he couldn’t make up for these executive weaknesses and was not mentally prepared to grasp corruption.
Correct.
I just saying Moochelle could be pregnant and no one would notice.
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