Worst Presidents: Warren Harding (1921-1923)
Warren G. Harding's claim to infamy rests on spectacular ineptitude captured in his own pathetic words: "I am not fit for this office and should never have been here."
A former newspaperman and publisher who won a string of offices in his native Ohio, he was an unrestrained womanizer noted for his affability, good looks, and implacable desire to please. It was good, his father once told him, that he hadn't been born a girl, "because you'd be in the family way all the time. You can't say no."
Harding should have said no when Republican Party bosses in the proverbial smoke-filled room (a phrase that originated with this instance) made him their 11th-hour pick for the highest office. He was so reassuringly vague in his campaign declarations that he was understood to support both the foes and the backers of U.S. entry into the League of Nations, the hottest issue of the day.
Once in the White House, the 29th president busied himself with golf, poker, and his mistress, while appointees and cronies plundered the U.S. government in a variety of creative ways. (His secretary of the interior allowed oilmen, for a modest under-the-table sum, to tap into government oil reserves, including one in Teapot Dome, Wyo.)
"I have no trouble with my enemies," Harding once said, adding that it was his friends who "keep me walking the floor nights." Stress no doubt contributed to his death in office, probably from a stroke.
Almost a decade later, his former attorney general called Harding "a modern Abraham Lincoln whose name and fame will grow with time." That time is still a long way off.
Reader Comments
Woods Pt 2
Yes, adding to the Woods comment, perhaps it was Harding's ineptitude that kept him from doing anything during the early Depression of the '20s, which turned out to be the perfect solution to ending it soon, unlike Roosevelt, who made it worse, and kept it going decades longer than it should have. He'll be on this list in time. Perhaps Obama as well. (Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, and I don't vote or favor a single party, except my own, on my birthday).
Warren Harding
I think Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents because he hired cronies rather than experienced people. He was too busy gambling & fooling around with other women to look after the country that just just coming out of a devastating war.who knows what kind of President he would have been had he lived to serve out his term.
I'm beginning to think...
that George W. is the reincarnation of Harding. He pretty much let his cronies plunder the treasury via fat tax breaks and no-bid contracts while he spend a third of his regime on vacation. He thinks that history will vindicate him as well. Has hell begun to freeze yet?
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