As Bill Clinton ponders the legacy thing, he no doubt expects peace, prosperity and other successes of his administration will obscure the scandals and corruption as time goes by. But, as the case of Warren G. Harding shows, the evil that presidents do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Harding's tenure resembles Clinton's in significant ways, with one significant difference: his bones were interred before his first term was up. Being dead, he couldn't redeem his failures nor rebut post-presidency critics. Two-termer Clinton now has, presumably, decades to practice spin control.
Harding was elected president in 1920 with 60.3 percent of the vote, the largest margin in over 100 years. Interestingly, the 1920 election featured a clever and determined "Clinton War Room"-style campaign effort. Harding and advisers invented spin control. That was a major accomplishment. John A. Morello describes the campaign well in his forthcoming "Selling the Available Man: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising and the Election of Warren G. Harding" (Greenwood, 192 pages, $56.50). A notable success was the quashing of what are now called "bimbo eruptions," one of which required a large bribe to one of Harding's mistresses.
