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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.