Harding’s Bad Image Gets Pardon

Unlike many presidential hometowns, this midsized Midwestern city long has preferred to emphasize not that it sired a president but that it is one of the popcorn capitals of America.

That’s because its famed first citizen happens to have been Warren Gamaliel Harding, often described by historians as one of the worst chief executives in this nation’s history.

But for Harding--who won notoriety for his Administration’s involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal and for his own two well-publicized extramarital affairs, one while he was President--the recent years have been kinder. In some quarters, even his deep ignominy shows signs of improving.

“Local residents were embarrassed about (Harding’s) besmeared reputation, but in the past five years there has been a gradual change in attitude, a willingness by some to talk about him,” notes Robert Rupp, an Ohio State University history professor.

Rupp, 41, who teaches on Ohio State’s Marion campus, recently produced a half-hour documentary, “Warren G. Harding--From Main Street to the White House.” In it, he interviews several Marion residents about the 29th President who held the country’s highest office from March 4, 1921, until he died Aug. 2, 1923, in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. Apoplexy was believed to be his cause of death.

Taking a Second Look

“People here are taking a second look at Harding,” Rupp said. “I think you can say he’s working his way back. Americans have a special regard for the office of the presidency. They change their opinions about Presidents with the passing of time, as we’ve seen with Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon. We can see that beginning to happen with Harding by historians and by the people of Marion.”

The professor described Marion, population 35,000, as a city in the process of discovering its roots. “People may dispute what kind of President Harding was, but not too many small towns can claim a President. And, despite the corruptness of some of his associates, there were several major accomplishments in his Administration.”

Ironically, while he lived, Harding was one of the most popular Presidents in history. After conducting his famed “Front Porch” campaign from his Marion home, he was elected with 60.3% of the popular vote in 1920, the most of any President to that time. The silver-haired, handsome President was admired and respected while in office.

But his popularity plummeted after he died. In 1927, Nan Britton, the President’s paramour, wrote the 437-page book “The President’s Daughter” in which she detailed her 6 1/2-year love affair with Harding, which she claimed produced a daughter, Elizabeth Ann.

Britton’s book, still available in many libraries, was dedicated “with understanding and love to all unwedded mothers, and to their innocent children whose fathers are usually not known to the world.” The evidence of the affair is there, Rupp said, “but there is still some question as to whether the child was fathered by President Harding.”

Another Beating

In 1929, Harding’s reputation took another beating when Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe. He was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000 in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal, which involved fraudulent leases on naval oil reserves. Fall was the first Cabinet member ever to serve time in prison.

To his credit, Harding did not know about the Teapot Dome scandal as it developed, though it marred his Administration’s reputation, Rupp said.

Harding was born 25 miles east of here in Blooming Grove on Nov. 2, 1865. When he was 19, he borrowed $300 from his father, Dr. George Harding, and started the Marion Star. He published the newspaper for 39 years until he sold it for $550,000 while President in 1923. His newsboys included Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for president. The paper continues to this day.

Harding was the only editor-publisher to become President when he defeated another Ohioan, James Cox, former governor of the state, who also published a newspaper, the Dayton Daily News. Harding served as state senator, lieutenant governor and U.S. senator from Ohio before entering the White House.

“Warren Harding hasn’t been treated fairly by history,” said Herbert S. Gary, 67, an educator until 10 years ago, when he became curator of the Harding Home and Museum in Marion. “He was a good President. I know every once in a while, when ratings of the worst Presidents in history are published, his name is right up at the top. I know of two polls by college professors listing him as the ‘worst President ever.’ But I believe if anyone bothers to check the record, they will find the professors were way off the mark.”

Gary likes to cite a passage from Harding’s 1916 Republican Convention keynote address, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes was nominated for President: “We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.”

Smiling, Gary asked if the passage sounded familiar. He then quoted John F. Kennedy’s famous inaugural address: “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

A Borrowed Phrase?

Gary is convinced President Kennedy or one of his speech writers read Harding’s address and borrowed the phrase.

Harding accomplishments that Gary mentioned include: balancing the budget; the largest decrease of income taxes in history; calling for full citizenship for blacks during his campaign and several times while President; establishing a federal narcotics board; vigorously advocating U.S. membership in a world court; convening the Naval Disarmament Conference in Washington, the first international meeting of its kind that resulted in four treaties; and releasing $30 million in public aid to feed millions of destitute Russians.

“There is a monument to President Harding in Beijing, erected many years ago, because he put the pressure on Japan to remove its troops from China . . . ,” Gary said.

Harding’s three-story home, where he and his wife, Florence Kling De Wolfe Harding, lived for 30 years, has been restored with gas lights and its original turn-of-the-century furnishings. Behind the home is the Harding Museum, an $800, 30 x 40-foot precut Sears, Roebuck building put up as press headquarters for Harding’s 1920 campaign.

Filled With Memorabilia

The Ohio Historical Society owns and runs the home, the museum filled with Warren G. Harding memorabilia and the huge, white, circular Harding Memorial, which has Georgia marble pillars and contains the tombs of the President and his wife in the middle of 10 landscaped acres in Marion.

The society’s archives in Columbus house the best collection of presidential and personal papers and other records of Harding’s Administration in existence anywhere; it has more than 351,000 items.

Rupp said a $538,000 renovation of the memorial--supported with a congressional appropriation--is further evidence of recent, renewed interest in Harding. “The memorial, one of the most impressive of all memorials to the Presidents, indicates his popularity at the time of his death. There was a tremendous outpouring of sympathy throughout the nation with people from every state contributing $783,000 to the cost of building the memorial with thousands of the contributors schoolchildren giving pennies, nickels and dimes,” he said.

At Warren G. Harding High School in Marion, Principal Vaughn Williams, 49, told how the faculty tries to instill a sense of pride that Marion was Harding’s hometown: “We emphasize the good qualities about him, his important contributions to history and downplay the negative side,” the principal said.

The school’s emblem is a replica of the presidential seal. Members of the athletic teams are called the Presidents. The eagle is the school’s mascot. A large portrait of Warren G. Harding hangs in the high school lobby.

“As time goes on, it becomes easier for students to outlive the negative reflections about the President from their home town by the generations who have gone before,” Williams insisted.