Everyone who knows anything at all about American history believes that Warren G. Harding was our worst President—Harding, the affable fool from Marion, Ohio, who, after passing two utterly undistinguished terms as state senator and one as lieutenant governor, went to the U.S. Senate in 1914 and, having done little but get along with people, came out of the deadlocked 1920 Republican National Convention headed for the Presidency. His friend the politico Harry M. Daugherty had helped him get there, and in return Harding put him and his pals—the “Ohio Gang”—in a position where they could plunder the government while the trusting Harding pursued his vision of “normalcy,” which involved the very vigorous pursuit of his mistresses. Eventually the scandal broke, but Harding died suddenly (seventy-five years ago this August) at the end of a tour of the West in time to escape the worst of it.
He has not escaped the judgment of history. In every poll—the most recent was conducted just last year—the twenty-ninth President comes at the very bottom.
For years I shared this general opinion of Harding. But then I started to study him. Actually I began with his wife, Florence, working on what has just become a published biography of her. Naturally it became clear to me that I couldn’t know Florence Harding without becoming well acquainted with Warren. I was initially struck by the way Americans reacted to his death. He was the object of national grief and reverence, and in his gentleness, geniality, and warmth he was even considered Lincoln’s equal. As I read about him, it began to dawn on me that possibly these tributes were not entirely undeserved.
