Warren G. Harding (1865 - 1923) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who served as the twenty-ninth president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923. [1] Elected by a landslide on a pledge to return the country to "normalcy" after the First World War, he cut taxes, raised tariffs and convened the Washington Naval Conference. Scandals involving members of his administration, above all Teapot Dome, emerged after his death and lastingly damaged his reputation. [2]
Early life and newspaper career
Harding was born on 2 November 1865 in Blooming Grove, Ohio, the eldest of eight children of a farmer who later practised medicine. [1] He attended Ohio Central College and moved with his family to Marion, Ohio.
In 1884, at eighteen, he and two partners bought the failing Marion Star for a few hundred dollars. [2] Harding built it into a successful daily and became a leading figure in the town. In 1891 he married Florence Kling DeWolfe, who ran the paper's circulation department and was credited with much of its commercial success.
Political rise
Harding served in the Ohio State Senate from 1900 and as lieutenant governor from 1904 to 1906, losing a bid for governor in 1910. [1] He delivered the nominating address for William Howard Taft at the 1912 Republican convention and in 1914 was elected to the United States Senate, where his legislative record was modest.
The 1920 Republican convention deadlocked between the leading contenders, and Harding emerged as a compromise nominee. [2] Campaigning largely from his front porch in Marion, he called for a return to "normalcy" and opposed American membership of the League of Nations. He defeated James M. Cox with slightly more than 60 per cent of the popular vote, in the first national election in which women could vote throughout the country.
Presidency
Harding's cabinet combined figures of high ability with associates of doubtful character. Charles Evans Hughes at State, Herbert Hoover at Commerce and Andrew Mellon at the Treasury were substantial appointments; others, drawn from his Ohio circle, were not. [1]
His administration cut wartime income tax rates, raised tariffs through the Fordney-McCumber Act, created the Bureau of the Budget under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, and restricted immigration through the Emergency Quota Act. [3] The Washington Naval Conference of 1921 and 1922, convened by Hughes, produced the first modern arms limitation agreements, setting ratios for capital ships among the major naval powers. Harding also commuted the sentence of the imprisoned socialist Eugene V. Debs and spoke in Birmingham, Alabama, in favour of Black civil and political rights, unusually for a president of the period.
Death and scandals
On a speaking tour of the western states and Alaska, Harding fell ill and died suddenly in San Francisco on 2 August 1923, most likely of a heart attack; Calvin Coolidge succeeded him. [1] He was widely mourned at the time.
Within months, congressional investigations exposed extensive corruption. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had leased the Teapot Dome naval oil reserve in Wyoming and reserves in California to private oil men in exchange for personal payments, and became the first cabinet officer imprisoned for crimes committed in office. [4] Separate scandals engulfed the Veterans Bureau and the office of the Attorney General. No evidence established that Harding profited personally, but the revelations, together with later disclosures about his private life, reduced his posthumous standing sharply.
Legacy
Historians have generally placed Harding near the bottom of presidential rankings, though some have credited his administration with the naval arms agreements, budget reform and the economic recovery that followed the sharp recession of 1920 and 1921. [2]
