Yes, I’d agree for the most part. Harding was overwhelmed by the Presidency, and he even privately admitted that he was unqualified for the job. As President, Harding actually put some excellent people in his Cabinet: Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace (who was the father of future Vice President Henry A. Wallace). Unfortunately, he also put people like Attorney General Harry Daugherty and Interior Secretary Albert Fall in his Cabinet and they took advantage of Harding’s inexperience and gullibility.
Under normal circumstances, Harding never would have been President, but a perfect storm of events took place prior to the 1920 Presidential election cycle. After eight years of Woodrow Wilson which included the first World War, an ugly political battle over the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, and questions about Wilson’s physical and mental health during his last months in the White House, the country was ready for a change. Not only were Americans ready for a new President, but they were also ready for a fresh start to the new decade with a different political party (Wilson was a Democrat) controlling the White House. And, pretty much from the moment of Wilson’s re-election in 1916, Theodore Roosevelt was seen as the obvious successor to President Wilson in 1920.
However, Roosevelt died in January 1919 at the age of just 60 years old, and the race for the 1920 Republican Presidential nomination was suddenly wide open. Harding, a first-term U.S. Senator from Ohio, was barely on anyone’s radar as Republicans gathered in Chicago for the 1920 Republican National Convention. Leading candidates for the nomination included General Leonard Wood, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, Senator Hiram Johnson of California, Pennsylvania Governor William C. Sproul, Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler, Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, RNC Chairman Will Hays (who was later the namesake for the “Hays Code” system of censorship for the movie industry), and even Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge to a certain extent. It took ten rounds of balloting for Harding to win the nomination, and it fell upon him as a compromise candidate only because GOP leaders agreed that nobody was outright opposed to him (unlike every other possibility put before the convention). In the general election, Harding’s fortunes were boosted by the nation’s fatigue towards the Democrats after two terms with Wilson as President. Plus, the Democrats had an even more difficult time choosing a Presidential nominee than the Republicans had with Harding. It took forty-four ballots before the Democrats decided on Ohio Governor James M. Cox as their nominee.
No matter how well we was liked on a personal level, President Harding certainly wasn’t a figure that inspired confidence. Here are a few of his more famous quotes as President:
•”I am a man of limited talents from a small town.”
•”I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”
•”I’m in jail and I can’t get out.” – in a letter to his mistress
•”I don’t know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells me all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don’t know where the book is, and maybe I couldn’t read it if I found it. And there must be a man in the country somewhere who could weigh both sides and know the truth. Probably he is in some college or other. But I don’t know where to find him. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know how to get him. My God, this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be!”
•”My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my friends, my goddamn friends…they are the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.”
This is pretty much how I imagine George W Bush in the presidency.
