We're now on the 28th day of my daily presidents threads celebrating the 250th anniversary of the USA.Today we have Warren G. Harding (11/2/1865 - 8/2/1923), who served as president from 1921 to 1923 when he died of a heart attack midway through his term. Prior to becoming president he was a senator from and lieutenant governor from Ohio.Notable actions or events during his presidency include the Washington Naval Conference, the Recession of 1920 - 1921, the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Harry M. Daugherty Scandal, the Jess W. Smith Scandal, the Charles R. Forbes Scandal, the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, the Voyage of Understanding, the Revenue Act of 1921, the Budget and Accounting Act, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, the Emergency Quota Act, the Packers and Stockyards Act, the Tulsa Race Massacre, the Sheppard-Towner Act, and his Affair with Nan BrittonWhat do you think of the guy who might've been killed by his wife?
>>18532902Just a loser.
>>18532902Underrated because he was not liked by the Eastern media establishment, but he ended Wilson's police state and brought back friendliness and openness to the White House.
>>18532902>Hoover later recalled:>One day after lunch when we were a few days out, Harding asked me to come to his cabin. He plumped at me the question: "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?" My natural reply was "Publish it, and at least get credit for integrity on your side." He remarked that this method might be politically dangerous. I asked for more particulars. He said that he had received some rumors of irregularities, centering around Smith, in connection with cases in the Department of Justice. He had followed the matter up and finally sent for Smith. After a painful session he told Smith that he would be arrested in the morning. Smith went home, burned all his papers, and committed suicide. Harding gave me no information about what Smith had been up to. I asked what Daugherty's relations to the affair were. He abruptly dried up and never raised the question again.
>With Harding's election, Republicans were firmly in control again and a pall of neo-standpatter reaction settled over Washington. The Wilson years had been taxing for many Americans. The constant idealism, the calls for endless self-sacrifice were all too much. The nation wanted peace and calm for a while and in keeping with that spirit it elected a third-rate nonentity.
>>18533592>Nice guyHow do you know? He was a politician and an adulterer.
>Harding commuted the sentence of Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs in December 1921, who had been jailed by Wilson for protesting the war, and ran a presidential ticket in 1920 from Federal prison in Atlanta, and invited him to the White House. He considered that Debs at age 65 was "unlikely to cause any further trouble." The old progressive leader passed away four years later.
>Harding's appointment of Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary was a sign of a turn back towards conservatism in government. Although he did not manage to serve a full four year term, he ended up appointing a record six Supreme Court Justices, including William Taft, newly elevated to the Chief Justice's chair, and most of Harding's appointees also kept the Court in a firmly reactionary stance for years to come.
>>18532628>>18532902Warren Harding, he does fine
Harding's father once said "If Warren was a girl, he'd have been in trouble an awful lot since he can't say no."
>>18532902Turned things around pretty well from the dark days of Wilson's final two years in office and got the 1920s economic boom rolling. He was elected with 61% of the popular vote, the highest total ever recorded by a non-incumbent president.
>>18534442The economy would have recovered no matter who was president.
