Is Warren Harding interesting?

[saltpoint]

[saltpoint]

1. Harding info here:

http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/academic/americanpresident/harding

Dig it and dig it the most.

[Swamp Rat]

6. Read the whole bio

He is not interesting to me, but I always want to learn historical facts.... he is certainly not the worst president ever.

[saltpoint]

9. Hi, Swamp Rat. Yep. As weak as Harding may have been, there is

another U.S. president we could probably think of who's a lot worse.

And I didn't vote for his daddy either.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. Well, he fathered an illegitimate child in a White House closet with Nan Britton.

She wrote a book in the 1920s called "The President's Daughter".

[saltpoint]

3. Hi, Perragrande. Yep. I imagine Mrs. Harding was less than

pleased with some of her husband's antics.

I'm not kidding when I say this is a great film waiting to be made.

[Uncle Joe]

13. It must have been a walk in closet,

the closets in these older homes aren't hardly big enough for one person to stand in, much less two.

[saltpoint]

15. LOL! Maybe Harding was a contortionist. Scratch that. It's an image

none of us needs.

[mcscajun]

4. Yes he is, for his parallels with *.

"In the 1920s, President Harding was soaking in Big Oil money, appointing robber barons to his cabinet, cutting taxes for the rich and mangling his English. Sound familiar?"
http://www.alternet.org/story/11181

[saltpoint]

8. It sure does. Reminds me of what's-his-name -- you know -- that guy

in the White House right now -- the one the Supreme Court handpicked for us.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. He was the prototype of * in that he ran for president, promising to restore

"normalcy" to remedy the trauma of WWI and Woodrow Wilson. He was a "regular guy". And he had a plethora of corruption scandals during his term (The Teapot Dome). He died before the end of his term, rumors being his wife killed him for humiliating her with his sexual indiscretions, but more commonly accepted was the explanation that death was his only way out of the mess he created.

[saltpoint]

11. Excellent summary of Harding's life.

And I love the point about his being kind of a prototype for you-know-who.

Eerie similarities.

[hobbit709]

7. Harding had several problems

1. He couldn't keep his pants zippered even more than Clinton
2. Was about as stupid as George-but he looked good
3. Most likely wasn't personally corrupt but surrounded himself with totally corrupt/incompetent cronies
4. Marion, Ohio where I grew up brags about the fact that Warren G Harding was from there. What they forget to mention is that they haven't come up with anything else new since 1920.

[saltpoint]

10. Enjoyed your points on Harding, hobbit709.

Especially No. 4!

It's quite true. There must have been a serious wardrobe malfunction at the zipper apparatus regarding President Harding.

[AlCzervik]

12. yes indeed, The Tea pot dome scandal is Worth the price of admission. I actually find all

presidents to be interesting. Right now i'm reading a huge biography of LBJ, it has some factual inaccuracies but it's still a good book and one interesting man.

[saltpoint]

14. Good for you on the LBJ read. I'm not emotionally drawn to LBJ because

of the hard-ass tactics he sometimes used, but on the other hand, I can't tear myself away from articles about him. He draws a reader right into his life, right into his inner circles.

Harding is kind of a mystery to me. It's as if his presidency operated in one realm and his private life in another more than many public figures.

[Richard Steele]

16. Yes. nm

[saltpoint]

30. Hi, dicksteele. On this Sunday morning, here's a thought from

Warren himself:

"I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight.
But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking
the floor at nights!"

--Warren G. Harding

[terrya]

17. Yes, he is.

I've been interested in Harding and his Presidency for a while. And I get the sense today that his reputation as one of the worst Presidents ever may be slightly overrated. It was the people around him (in his Cabinet) who contributes to that reputation.

[saltpoint]

21. Hi, terrya. There was an ethical unbalance in that administration.

Of course we can't really let Warren off the hook -- he was the boss.

I find him an interesting man, even as I'm kind of appalled at his administration's transgressions.

And I'm in the his-wife-killed-him-for-sure camp.

[TwilightGardener]

18. "Gamaliel". Now that's a name you don't hear enough of anymore!

[saltpoint]

22. LOL! Yes. It seems to have fallen out of favor among parents in

subsequent generations!

[salin]

19. Mainly because or Rove's obsession with Mark Hannah

Harding's advisor.

[Ignacio Upton]

24. Hannah was McKinley's advisor

n/t.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. Just another corrupt republican

If you find that interesting . . .

I am getting kind of burnt out on it though.

[saltpoint]

23. There were people who, during the Nixon-era Watergate Senate hearings,

glued themselves to the television to hear every syllable that each of the witnesses had to say in response to senators' questions.

I was among the fast-glued.

It's a similar response to Harding's administration. And the boat trip to Alaska and his death in San Francisco -- that's a film waiting to be made.

I think he's compelling, and saying so isn't an endorsement of transgressions against the state. If you were a Democrat and you weren't interested in watching Sam Ervin take Nixon apart piece by piece, you might have been on heroin. A lot of us became even more political after Nixon's landslide victory in 1972 became Nixon resigning in 1974.

[CK_John]

25. Sorry I only go back to FDR. Never met the man. n/t

[saltpoint]

26. Well, not to worry. Harding's still alive.

No, wait. That isn't Warren Harding. That's Don Fleetwell, our State Farm agent.

[HughBeaumont]

27. Phuq that robber-baron enabler.

Total blueprint for a certain Failure Fuhrer, also a supporter of unbridled corporatism and crony capitalism. Luckily Dumberica only had to suffer through one term of his bullshit. Too bad for Harding there wasn't an electoral system back then as corrupt as he was.

[saltpoint]

29. Warren is really kind of the poster boy for the transgressions you list.

We had had weak presidents before. Buchanan rates right up there with me as a really weak president. Franklin Pierce was no champion on the political scale to be sure, but Buchanan nevertheless soared into the number-one spot in weak presidencies, IMO, and immediately following Pierce, too. You have to hand it to James Buchanan: when it came to weak presidencies, he really takes the cake.

At least up to Harding's administration. Then a new contender steps forth! When the First Lady KILLS her husband, a case can't really be made for a successfu presidency.

And not until Richard Milhouse Nixon was there a president as inept and arrogant and corrupt.

These days, Dubya is well, well, well on course to eclipse Buchanan's, Harding's, and Nixon's corruption levels combined. Not a small task, either.

[undeterred]

28. He's no Warren Beatty.