Warren G. Harding

Despite serving more than 50 years apart, Warren G. Harding and Ulysses S. Grant have many things in common. Both were from wealthy but self-made families. In Grant's case, he was the son of a tannery owner and in Harding's case, of a couple of farmers turned medical doctors. Both were born in Ohio. Both served right after major wars. Grant was inaugurated 4 years after the civil war ended and Harding was inaugurated 3 years after World War 1 ended. Both also were once dubbed bottom 3 presidents due to how corrupt their cabinets were. However, they also share the fact that in recent years, certain once-suppressed aspects of their administrations (especially their progressive views on race) have come to light, causing historians to adopt a more positive view of Harding and Grant. They do diverge in that Grant is now considered good and Harding is still considered below-average (just not one of the worst), but they still have enjoyed incredible improvements in their legacies. And also with Grant, I also believe we have made the correct choice in taking a more positive stance on Harding.

By 1920, Harding had been a Senator representing Ohio for 6 years. He was known for being a moderate interested more in compromise and unity than any specific set of policies. His only strong stances were an opposition to free trade and a dislike for the League of Nations. Two years before joining the Senate, he began to obtain national stardom after giving the nomination speech for William Howard Taft at the 1912 Republican Convention. Unoffensive, charismatic, and kind, Harding became the Republican nominee in the 1920 election. His opponent was James M. Cox, who was running with future-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The incumbent was Woodrow Wilson, who presided over a stressful 8 years tainted by WW1 and the debate over the League of Nations. Since Wilson was a Democrat, Americans began associating these troubles with progressivism and so lined up in droves to vote for Harding. 1920 was the biggest landslide in American history up until that point.

On March 4, 1921, Harding was inaugurated, formally replacing Wilson as president. In his first year as president, Harding embarked on a quartet of legislative programs and pursuits, which I believe to be a mix of good and bad. Of the things I consider bad, I oppose Harding's reduction in the income tax. The income tax is a reliable source of revenue, as people always want more money and thus higher incomes. The policy also allows the tax burden to shift to the uber-wealthy and incentivizes the government to maintain a healthy economy. If the economy performs well, then people will make a higher income and so can be taxed more. For these reasons, I hold his reduction in the income tax against Harding.

Following WW1, European immigrants began flocking to the US en masse, wanting to escape the horrors of the postwar continent. As a result, on May 19, 1921, Harding signed the Emergency Quota Act. Each year until the postwar chaos subsided, the US would only accept a number of immigrants from European nations matching 3% of the people from that country already living in America at the time of the 1910 census. The Emergency Quota Act was temporary and so not something I can give Harding too much criticism for. At least, I'd be far more upset at the law if it was meant to be permanent. Not only does immigration help the economy due to the arrival of new spenders, but permitting it is also a moral obligation in times like Harding's. Europeans were starving in the wake of WW1. Those still alive were living much shorter, uncomfortable, and deprived lives. The system created by the law also restricted immigration from Eastern Europe more than other parts of Europe, yet Eastern Europe was the most damaged.

I actually consider the Emergency Quota Act to be the worst thing Harding did as president. However, his first year also contained real accomplishments. For instance, he raised tariffs. I support this, being a protectionist on trade. Tariffs raise government revenue in the short term and, in the long term, keep jobs at home, discourage corporations from exploiting loose labor laws in other countries, and reduce overreliance on international supply chains. I think it was a good decision by Harding to expand tariffs. Harding also established the Government Accountability Office. The GAO, which still exists over a century after its formation, monitors government activity to avoid authoritarianism, hold corrupt officials accountable, and curb wasteful spending. Obviously, the GAO is often unsuccessful, but the country would be worse off without it and the organization remains an admirable attempt at preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States.

Honestly, the creation of the GAO was not just one of Harding's biggest accomplishments, but also his most ironic. As mentioned at the start of this article, Harding was held by historians in such low esteem for such a long time because of how corrupt his administration was. In many cases, Harding was either unaware of or actively opposed to this corruption. But still, I hold presidents accountable for what their lower officials do, so I must detract from Harding's score because of these scandals. For instance, Harry Daughtery (Harding's attorney general) would give criminals pardons in exchange for money. Harding was unaware of Daughtery's sick behavior, but still enabled it. Daughtery did not have adequate experience to be attorney general, yet Harding appointed him solely because he, Daughtery, helped him secure the Republican nomination in 1920.

At other points, Harding actively fought the corruption his cronies engaged in. In February of 1923, it was revealed that Charles Forbes - the secretary of Veterans Affairs (an office Harding created!) - had been selling medical supplies reserved for the military to private doctors and hospitals. Harding was infuriated and immediately pressured Forbes into resigning. In fact, Harding may have even gotten so upset with Forbes that he grabbed him by the shirt collar and lifted him up in a violent rage, though this story is disputed. If that story is true, most historians agree that it was the immediate cause of Forbes' resignation. Outside of these instances, however, Harding protected his corrupt cabinet. William Howard Taft, joining in the environmentalist passions of other Progressive Era presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, had set aside several oilfields, saying that no one could drill them except the navy. Even then, it had to be when the navy was truly desperate.

On May 31, 1921, at the behest of Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, Harding signed Executive Order 3474. Personally written by Fall, Executive Order 3474 maintained the status of the Teapot Dome, Elk Hills, and Buena Vista Oil Fields as naval reserves, but transferred control over the fields from the navy to the Department of the Interior. Soon after, Fall began allowing a private corporation known as the Mammoth Oil Company to drill in these 3 fields in exchange for money, loans, and animals to use at his, Fall's, ranch. Fall also mandated that the Mammoth Oil Company assist in the construction of an oil pipeline connecting Wyoming and Missouri, as well as a government storage facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The shady agreements were made in secret, but in April 1922, began to be revealed after a group of oil workers in Wyoming reported a truck with the Mammoth Oil Company logo driving toward Teapot Dome. Harding immediately suppressed all investigations into the incident. Information about the Teapot Dome Scandal wouldn't begin to emerge again until Calvin Coolidge (who took over after Harding died on August 2, 1923) permitted such investigations.

Beyond the corruption, Harding did many other things, ranging in impact from great to awful. Harding attempted to establish the US as an international banking power, an idea I oppose on the grounds that countries should be free from unnecessary pressures to behave in a certain way, especially from banks they may rely on. Other elements of the Harding Administration were far more positive, however. Harding signed the Cable Act, for instance, which allowed women to maintain their US citizenship when marrying an immigrant who had yet to obtain citizenship. He also routinely spoke out in favor of civil rights and even tried to pass an anti-lynching bill!

With very few exceptions, foreign policy was a great field for Harding. His greatest accolade in this territory was the Dawes Plan, which delayed the rise of Hitler and perhaps could have prevented it entirely. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919 following Germany's defeat in WW1, was the main cause for Hitler's rise to power. The treaty formally blamed Germany for the war (even though Austria-Hungary, Britain, and Russia all played roles in starting the war as well), forced it to cede a district called Alsace-Lorraine to France, stripped Germany of all its colonies, and disbanded the German military. Perhaps most disastrously, it required Germany to pay off any and all debts stemming from the First World War. That final clause resulted in German officials printing large sums of money to pay off the enormous debt, creating a hyperinflation crisis that Hitler and the Nazi Party blamed on the Jews. Germans loved this over-simplistic explanation despite all its obvious flaws, facilitating Hitler's rise to power.

In early 1923, Harding initiated the Dawes Plan. Under the Dawes Plan, Washington DC gave Berlin large amounts of financial aid that would then be used to revitalize Germany's economy and reduce inflation. Thus, the people of Germany would become wealthier and could pay more in taxes, providing the German government with more money that it could forward toward paying off the debt. The Dawes Plan came undone following Harding's death, but could have saved Europe from the carnage of WW2 had it continued. The Dawes Plan, however, was merely the jewel in the crown that was Harding's diplomacy and foreign policy. Harding did many other wonderful things regarding foreign affairs. He convinced numerous countries to reduce the size of their militaries and was able to convince much of the Arab world to allow the US to drill for oil in their borders. Harding also brokered the Nine-Power Treaty, in which all signing countries agreed not to take any land from China without Chinese consent.

Harding could have been an amazing president. He helped Germany weather the economic storm following WW1, preserved Chinese sovereignty, forwarded demilitarization, supported civil rights, raised tariffs, established the Department of Veterans Affairs, presided over an extremely healthy economy, and even fought corruption in the long term via the Government Accountability Office. But he had a number of fatal - tragic, even - flaws that keep him from that glamorous title. He restricted impoverished and wartorn people from seeking refuge in the US, reduced the income tax, suppressed investigations into the Teapot Dome Scandal, enabled the misuse of the pardon power, and simply failed to live up to the ideals of the Government Accountability Office. Had the GAO encompassed more than a single bill signed by Harding at the very start of his tenure and instead represented the whole of the Harding Administration, Harding would rank near the top of my list.