Harding, Warren G.

Harding, Warren G. (1865–1923), twenty‐ninth president of the United States.Although tainted by scandal, Warren Gamaliel Harding also presided over two years of peace and prosperity and an innovative arms‐control initiative, and laid a foundation for the conservative Republican party of the late twentieth century.

After a decade as publisher of the Marion Star in his Ohio hometown, Harding entered Republican politics in the mid‐1890s, encouraged by his able and ambitious wife Florence. After mixed success in state politics, he won a U.S. Senate seat in 1914. A lackluster legislator, he nevertheless gained the 1920 Republican presidential nomination as an amiable compromise candidate whose conservative views placed him in the mainstream of postwar Republicanism. Calling for a return to “normalcy” after an era of reform, war, and struggles over the League of Nations, Harding defeated his Democratic opponent, Ohio governor James M. Cox, by a landslide. Despite early flirtation with such progressive programs as farm relief and health care for mothers and infants, Harding's key domestic policies—immigration restriction, tax cuts, budgetary restraint, tariff protection, and opposition to economic regulation—reflected a solidly conservative approach.

A lax administrator and indecisive leader, Harding relied heavily on his appointees, some of whom achieved notable success. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes initiated the pathbreaking Washington Naval Arms Conference and improved relations with Latin America. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (1855–1937), with Charles Dawes (1865–1951), director of the newly created Budget Bureau, helped fuel prosperity after a downturn in 1921 by a program of tax‐ and spending‐cuts and federal‐debt reduction. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover promoted business cooperation while Henry C. Wallace (1866–1924) introduced innovative programs as secretary of agriculture.

Other appointees, however, grossly abused their public trust for personal gain. Charles Forbes, director of the Veteran's Bureau, was convicted of stealing government funds. Influence‐peddling charges swirled around Attorney General Harry Daugherty. The Harding scandals collectively became known as Teapot Dome after revelations in 1924 that oilmen had bribed Interior Secretary Albert Fall to secure leases of government oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and Elk Hills in California. On the personal side, Harding, having carried on a long‐term affair with a woman from Marion, Ohio, in 1917 launched a relationship with young Nan Britton, whom he occasionally smuggled into the White House. Britton told her story in a sensational 1927 book, The President's Daughter.

Dying of a heart attack before either the personal or public scandals became widely known, Harding was widely mourned. His legacy lived on in a Republican party that by the later twentieth century had largely embraced his conservative domestic policies.
See also Conservatism; Coolidge, Calvin; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Immigration Law; Tariffs; Teapot Dome Scandal; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Robert K. Murray , The Harding Era, 1969.
Eugene P. Trani and and David L. Wilson , The Presidency of Warren G. Harding, 1977.

Alan Lichtman