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Warren G. Harding

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   Warren Gamaliel Harding
   Warren G. Harding
     __________________________________________________________________

   29th President of the United States
   In office
   March 4, 1921 –  August 2, 1923
   Vice President(s)   Calvin Coolidge
   Preceded by Woodrow Wilson
   Succeeded by Calvin Coolidge
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born November 2, 1865
   Near Blooming Grove, Ohio
   Died August 2, 1923
   San Francisco, California
   Political party Republican
   Spouse Florence Kling Harding
   Religion Baptist
   Signature

   Warren Gamaliel Harding ( November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an
   American politician and the 29th President of the United States,
   serving from 1921 to 1923, when he became the sixth president to die in
   office. A Republican from the U.S. state of Ohio, Harding was an
   influential newspaper publisher with a flair for public speaking before
   entering politics, first in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as
   lieutenant governor of Ohio (1903–1905). His political leanings were
   conservative, and his record in both offices was relatively
   undistinguished.

   At the conclusion of his term, Harding returned to private life, only
   to reenter politics ten years later as a United States Senator
   (1915–1921), where he again had a relatively undistinguished record,
   missing over two-thirds of the roll-call votes. An unknown politician
   at the time of the 1920 Republican National Convention, Harding emerged
   as a dark horse to become the presidential nominee through political
   maneuvering. In the 1920 election, he defeated his Democratic opponent
   James M. Cox in a landslide, 60.36 % to 34.19 % (404 to 127 in the
   electoral college), becoming the first president born after the
   culmination of the Civil War. He adopted laissez-faire policies both on
   economic and social policy. While on the final leg of a tour of the
   western states and the Alaska Territory, Harding died in San Francisco,
   California, 27 months into his term, at age 57. The cause of death was
   first said to have been food poisoning acquired during a stop-over in
   Vancouver, British Columbia. It was later believed that he died from
   apoplexy or a stroke; medical scholars now believe that Harding died of
   end-stage heart disease. He was succeeded by Vice President Calvin
   Coolidge.

   Because of several scandals involving others in his administration,
   after his death Harding gained a reputation as being one of America's
   least successful Presidents. In numerous polls of historians, Harding
   is ranked as one of the worst, or even last. However, some recent
   writers have come to different conclusions about Harding's place in
   history. John Dean, who wrote a 2004 biography of Harding for Times
   Press, has stated that "Harding is not a role model for a failed
   Presidency." Dr. Robert H. Ferrell, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of
   History at Indiana University, a Harding biographer and a leading
   national scholar on the presidency, concluded that Warren G. Harding
   was basically "a good President."

Early life

   President Harding was born on November 2, 1865, near Corsica, Ohio (now
   Blooming Grove, Ohio). Harding was the eldest of the eight children of
   Dr. George Tryon Harding, Sr. and Phoebe Elizabeth (Dickerson) Harding.
   His heroes were Alexander Hamilton and Napoleon. His mother was a
   midwife who later obtained her medical license, and his father taught
   for a time at a rural school north of Mount Gilead, Ohio. While he was
   a teenager, the Harding family moved to Caledonia, Ohio in neighboring
   Marion County when Harding's father acquired The Argus, a local weekly
   newspaper. It was here that Harding learned the basics of the business.
   His education was completed at Ohio Central College in Iberia, Ohio.
   While a college student, he learned more about the printing and
   newspaper trade while working at the Union Register in Mount Gilead.

   After graduation, Harding moved to Marion, Ohio, where he raised $300
   with two friends to purchase the failing Marion Daily Star. It was the
   weakest of Marion's three newspapers and the only daily in the growing
   city. Harding converted the paper's editorial platform to support the
   Republicans and enjoyed a moderate degree of success. However, his
   political stance was at odds with those who controlled most of Marion's
   local politics. When Harding moved to unseat the Marion Independent as
   the official paper of daily record, his actions brought the wrath of
   Amos Hall Kling, one of Marion's wealthiest real estate speculators,
   down upon him.

   While Harding won the war of words and made the Marion Daily Star one
   of the biggest newspapers in the county, the battle took a toll on his
   health. In 1889, when Harding was 24, he suffered exhaustion and
   nervous fatigue. He traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan to spend several
   weeks in a sanatorium regaining his strength. He later returned to
   Marion to continue operating the paper. He spent his days boosting the
   community on the editorial pages, and his evenings "bloviating"
   (Harding's term for informal conversation) with his friends over games
   of poker.
   Harding and Florence pose for this garden photograph.
   Enlarge
   Harding and Florence pose for this garden photograph.

   On July 8, 1891, Harding married Florence Kling, an older woman, a
   divorcee, and the mother of a young son, Marshall Eugene DeWolfe. She
   had pursued him persistently, until he reluctantly surrendered and
   proposed. Florence's father, Amos Hall Kling, was Harding's nemesis.
   Upon hearing that his only daughter intended to marry Harding, Kling
   disowned her and even forbade his wife to attend her wedding. He
   opposed the marriage vigorously and would not speak to his daughter or
   son-in-law for eight years.

   The couple complemented one another with Harding's affable personality
   balancing his wife's no-nonsense approach to life. Florence Harding
   inherited her father's determination and business sense and turned the
   Marion Daily Star into a profitable business. She has been credited
   with helping Harding to achieve greater things than he might have done
   alone, leading to speculation that she later pushed him all the way to
   the White House.

   Harding was a Freemason, raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason
   on August 27, 1920, in Marion Lodge #70, F.& A.M., in Marion, Ohio.

Political rise

   As an influential newspaper publisher with a flair for public speaking,
   Harding was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1899. He served four
   years before being elected lieutenant governor of Ohio, a post he
   occupied from 1903 to 1905. His leanings were conservative, and his
   record in both offices was relatively undistinguished. At the
   conclusion of his term as lieutenant governor, Harding returned to
   private life.

Senator

   Re-entering politics five years later, Harding lost a race for governor
   in 1910 but won election to the United States Senate in 1914. He served
   in the Senate from 1915 until his inauguration as President on March 4,
   1921, becoming the second sitting Senator to be elected President of
   the United States.

   As with his first term as Senator, Harding had a relatively
   undistinguished record, missing over two-thirds of the roll-call votes.
   Among them was the vote to send the 19th Amendment (granting women's
   suffrage) to the states for ratification, a measure he had supported.
   Harding was a strong opponent of President Woodrow Wilson's proposal to
   create a League of Nations, and he made a speech against its formation,
   claiming it was a mockery of American democracy.

   In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell has suggested that Harding's
   political success was based on his appearance, essentially that he
   "looked like a president". Gladwell argues that the first impression of
   Harding outweighed his intellectual and other deficiencies, and refers
   to the combination as the 'Harding Factor' in how people make
   decisions.

Election of 1920

   Harding inauguration, 1921.
   Enlarge
   Harding inauguration, 1921.

   Relatively unknown outside his own state, Harding was a true “ dark
   horse” candidate, winning the United States Republican Party nomination
   due to the political machinations of his friends after the nominating
   convention had become deadlocked. Republican leaders met in a
   smoke-filled room at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago to end the
   deadlock. Before receiving the nomination, he was asked whether there
   were any embarrassing episodes in his past that might be used against
   him. His formal education was limited, he had a longstanding affair
   with the wife of an old friend, and he was a social drinker. Harding
   answered “No” and the Party moved to nominate him, only to discover
   later his relationship with Carrie Fulton Phillips. Phillips and her
   family received an extended tour of Asia courtesy of the Republican
   Party, in order to secure her silence. Mrs. Harding's newlywed brother
   Vetallis “Tal” Kling and his bride Elnora “Nona” Younkins-Hinaman also
   received an all expense-paid tour of Europe from the Hardings. The
   bride was a Catholic widow, and the marriage was performed in the Roman
   Catholic Church. At the time Catholic associations were a liability in
   American politics, and Catholics were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan,
   recently revived as anti- Roman Catholic as well as anti- black and
   anti-Jewish. The Klan was rapidly becoming popular in the Midwest.
   There is disputed evidence that Harding was a Klan member.

   In the 1920 election, Harding ran against Democratic Ohio Governor
   James M. Cox, whose vice presidential candidate was Assistant Secretary
   of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. The election was seen in part as a
   referendum on whether to continue with the “ progressive” work of the
   Woodrow Wilson administration or to revert to the “ laissez-faire”
   approach of the William McKinley era.

   Harding ran on a promise to “Return to Normalcy”, a term he coined to
   reflect three trends of his time: a renewed isolationism in reaction to
   World War I, a resurgence of nativism, and a turning away from the
   government activism of the reform era.

   Harding's “front porch campaign” during the late summer and fall of
   1920 captured the imagination of the country. Not only was it the first
   campaign to be heavily covered by the press and to receive widespread
   newsreel coverage, but it was also the first modern campaign to use the
   power of Hollywood and Broadway stars, who traveled to Marion for photo
   opportunities with Harding and his wife. Al Jolson, Lillian Russell,
   Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford were among the conservative-minded
   luminaries to make the pilgrimage to central Ohio. Business icons
   Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone also lent their cachet
   to the campaign. From the onset of the campaign until the November
   election, over 600,000 people traveled to Marion to participate.

   The campaign owed a great deal to Florence Harding, who played perhaps
   a more active role than any previous candidate's wife in a presidential
   race. She cultivated the relationship between the campaign and the
   press. As the business manager of the Star, she understood reporters
   and their industry and played to their needs by making herself freely
   available to answer questions, pose for pictures, or deliver food
   prepared in her kitchen to the press office, which was a bungalow she
   had constructed at the rear of their property in Marion. Mrs. Harding
   even went so far as to coach her husband on the proper way to wave to
   newsreel cameras to make the most of coverage.

   The campaign also drew upon Harding's popularity with women. Considered
   handsome, Harding photographed well compared to Cox. However, it was
   Harding's support for women's suffrage in the Senate that made him
   extremely popular with women: the ratification of the 19th Amendment in
   August 1920 brought huge crowds of women to Marion, Ohio to hear
   Harding.

   During the campaign, rumors were spread that Harding's
   great-great-grandfather was a West Indian black and that other blacks
   might be found in his family tree. In response, Harding's campaign
   manager said, “No family in the state (of Ohio) has a clearer, a more
   honorable record than the Hardings, a blue-eyed stock from New England
   and Pennsylvania, the finest pioneer blood.” The rumors, perhaps based
   on no more than local gossip, were circulated by William Estabrook
   Chancellor. Rumors may have been sustained by an alleged response of
   Harding to a friendly reporter, perhaps meant merely to be dismissive:
   "How do I know, Jim? One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence."
   (Wallechinsky and Wallace, The People's Almanac)

   The milestone election of 1920 was the first in which women could vote
   nationwide. Harding received 61% of the national vote and 404 electoral
   votes, an unprecedented margin of victory. Cox received 36% of the
   national vote and 127 electoral votes. Socialist Eugene V. Debs,
   campaigning from Federal prison, received 3% of the national vote. Debs
   was in prison for opposing Wilson's draft; despite the many political
   differences between the two candidates, when Harding became President
   he pardoned Debs.

Presidency 1921–1923

   Harding addresses the Senate. Photo 1921
   Enlarge
   Harding addresses the Senate. Photo 1921

   The administration of Warren G. Harding followed the Republican Party
   platform approved at the 1920 Chicago convention. The thrust of the
   administration was to return the nation to a period in time when
   business forces — not government watchdog agencies — minded the
   business of the nation.

   Harding also believed in the clear separation of powers; that it was
   the Congress that was responsible for legislation, and it was Harding’s
   duty to ensure that it was signed into law. Harding also held high
   regard for the U.S. Supreme Court and believed that the Court’s role
   was to act as a safety net for Constitutional matters on behalf of the
   nation, its interests, and most importantly, its citizens. To solidify
   that notion, he nominated President William Howard Taft for the
   position of Chief Justice.

   Harding’s brief tenure in office has been widely characterized as one
   in which the President did little aside from play poker with cronies or
   golf with friends. During his twenty-seven months in office, he took
   one vacation, in the winter of 1922. During that vacation, the First
   Lady suffered an attack from kidney disease, and the vacation
   lengthened for one week until Mrs. Harding was released from the
   hospital.

   During his term, Harding personally answered most of the correspondence
   sent to him, which included queries posed to the President from United
   States citizens. It wasn’t until his health began to decline in 1923
   that he turned the correspondence over to a staff of assistants.

   Harding also pushed for the establishment of the Bureau of Veterans
   Affairs (later organized as the Department of Veterans Affairs), the
   first permanent attempt at answering the needs of those who had served
   the nation in time of War. Both the President and Mrs. Harding visited
   with members of the armed services that were hospitalized.

   The President also undertook a very active speaking schedule. In
   October 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, Harding spoke out in favour of
   thoughtfully approaching the issue of race, stating that the nation
   could not enjoy the promises of prosperity until the matter of equality
   was addressed.

   The Hardings visited their home community of Marion, Ohio once during
   the term when the city celebrated its Centennial the first week of
   July. The President arrived on 3 July, gave a speech to the community
   at the Marion County Fairgrounds on 4 July, and left the following
   morning for other speaking commitments.

Events during Presidency

     * Peace treaties signed with Germany, Austria and Hungary, formally
       ending World War I for the United States
     * Established the Bureau of Veteran Affairs
     * Treaty to indemnify Colombia for its loss of Panama
     * Washington Naval Conference 1921-1922
     * Budget and Accounting Act 1921
     * Revenue Act of 1921
     * Fordney-McCumber Tariff 1922
     * Teapot Dome Scandal
     * Resignation of Harding's Attorney General for accepting bribes
     * Pardon of war protestor Eugene Debs and other political prisoners
     * Warren Gamaliel Harding was the first President to visit Alaska.
     * Warren Gamaliel Harding was the eldest of eight children.
     * Warren Gamaliel Harding was the First American President to take
       office after World War One.
     * Warren Gamaliel Harding was the First President that was born after
       the culmination of the civil war.

Administration and Cabinet

   Enlarge
   OFFICE                    NAME                 TERM
   President                 Warren G. Harding    1921–1923
   Vice President            Calvin Coolidge      1921–1923
   Secretary of State        Charles Evans Hughes 1921–1923
   Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon        1921–1923
   Secretary of War          John W. Weeks        1921–1923
   Attorney General          Harry M. Daugherty   1921–1923
   Postmaster General        Will H. Hays         1921–1922
                             Hubert Work          1922–1923
                             Harry S. New         1923
   Secretary of the Navy     Edwin Denby          1921–1923
   Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall       1921–1923
                             Hubert Work          1923
   Secretary of Agriculture  Henry C. Wallace     1921–1923
   Secretary of Commerce     Herbert Hoover       1921–1923
   Secretary of Labor        James J. Davis       1921–1923

Supreme Court appointments

   Harding appointed the following justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * William Howard Taft - Chief Justice - 1921
          + Harding was the only President to have appointed a previous
            President to the Supreme Court.
     * George Sutherland - 1922
     * Pierce Butler - 1923
     * Edward Terry Sanford - 1923

Administrative Scandals

   Upon winning the election, Harding appointed many of his old allies to
   prominent political positions. Known as the “ Ohio Gang” (a term used
   by Charles Mee, Jr., for his book of the same name), some of the
   appointees used their new powers to rob the government. It is unclear
   how much, if anything, Harding himself knew about his friends' illicit
   activities.

   The most infamous scandal of the time was the Teapot Dome affair, which
   shook the nation for years after Harding's death. The scandal involved
   United States Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, who was
   convicted of accepting bribes and illegal no-interest personal loans in
   exchange for the leasing of public oil fields to business associates.
   (Absent the bribes and personal loans, the leases themselves were quite
   legal.) In 1931, Fall became the first member of a presidential Cabinet
   to be sent to prison.

   Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, was convicted of
   accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General,
   destroyed papers and then committed suicide. Charles Forbes, director
   of the Veterans Bureau, skimmed profits, earned large amounts of
   kickbacks, and directed underground alcohol and drug distribution. He
   was convicted of fraud and bribery and drew a two-year sentence.
   Charles Cramer, an aide to Charles Forbes, also committed suicide.

   No evidence to date suggests that Harding personally profited from
   these crimes, but he was apparently unable to stop them. “My God, this
   is a hell of a job!” Harding said. “I have no trouble with my enemies,
   but my damn friends, my God-damned friends… they're the ones that keep
   me walking the floor nights!”

Death in office

   Harding's casket can be seen in front of the White House.
   Enlarge
   Harding's casket can be seen in front of the White House.

   In June 1923, Harding set out on a cross-country “Voyage of
   Understanding”, planning to meet ordinary people and explain his
   policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit
   Alaska. Rumors of corruption in his administration were beginning to
   circulate in Washington by this time, and Harding was profoundly
   shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently
   detailing illegal activities previously unknown to him. At the end of
   July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia, he
   developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning.
   Arriving at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, he developed pneumonia.
   Harding died of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35 p.m. on 2
   August 1923, at the age of 57. The formal announcement, printed in the
   New York Times of August 2, 1923, stated that "A stroke of apoplexy was
   the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week.

   Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack; however,
   this diagnosis was not made by Dr. Charles Sawyer, the Surgeon General,
   who was traveling with the presidential party. Upon Sawyer's
   recommendation, Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy, which
   soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a
   plot. Sawyer's medical qualifications were also called into question.
   Harding was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who was sworn
   in by his father, a justice of the peace, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.

   Following his death, Harding's body was returned to Washington, where
   it was placed in the East Room of the White House pending a state
   funeral at the United States Capitol. White House employees at the time
   were quoted as saying that the night before the funeral, they heard
   Mrs. Harding speak for more than an hour to her dead husband. The most
   commonly reported (though never verified) remark attributed to Mrs.
   Harding at this time was “They can't hurt you now, Warren.”

   Harding was entombed in the receiving vault of the Marion Cemetery,
   Marion, Ohio, in August 1923. Following Mrs. Harding's death on 21
   November 1924, she too was temporarily buried next to her husband. Both
   bodies were moved in December 1927 to the newly completed Harding
   Memorial in Marion, which was dedicated by President Herbert Hoover in
   1931. The lapse between the final interment and the dedication was
   partly because of the aftermath of the Teapot Dome scandal.

Personal scandals and allegations

"Taint" of colored blood

   Harding's detractors began using the damaging rumor of his alleged
   African-American ancestry against him in the 1880s, claiming that
   Harding was "tainted by colored blood." Among those spreading the rumor
   was Amos Kling, Harding's future father-in-law, one of Marion's
   wealthiest citizens, who detested Harding and his newspaper.

   Those who hold to the theory of mixed race do so without proof, often
   relying on the research of William Estabrook Chancellor for details of
   Harding's supposed African-American lineage. There is no scientific or
   legal basis for these arguments. Chancellor's work never provided clear
   indications of his sources, or his proof. In fact, so few copies of his
   book exist (one of five known copies is owned by a private book
   collector in Marion, Ohio) that its availability to modern scholars is
   limited (however, Justice Department agents are alleged to have bought
   and destroyed most copies of this book). Furthermore, there has never
   been a test of Harding's DNA. The claim is also impossible to verify
   through public records in Ohio; Harding was born in 1865, and the state
   of Ohio did not require registration or recording of births until 1867.
   Furthermore, Chancellor's theories find no basis in Federal census
   records, nor in probate court records. Harding's 1923 California-issued
   death certificate also indicates nothing to suggest Chancellor's
   theories were accepted as fact. With the release in the 1960s of
   Francis Russell's The Shadow of Blooming Grove, the specter of
   Harding's mixed blood was again raised and, lacking factual sources,
   quickly put down as innuendo.

Ku Klux Klan

   There is another rumor that Harding was involved in the Ku Klux Klan.
   Historians Wyn Craig Wade and Glenn Feldman are among those who promote
   the theory. Both assert that Harding joined the Klan following his
   election, taking his Klan oath in the Green Room of the White House.
   Wade's evidence, based on claims made by Stetson Kennedy, is dismissed
   by several Harding biographers as based on third-party hearsay. Wade
   uses as evidence letters written by members of the Calvin Coolidge
   administration.

   However, no primary source material—that is to say material either
   written by Harding supporting the Klan or any documentation by members
   of the Harding administration to support Craig and Wade's assertions—is
   known to exist. Recent Harding biographers Robert Ferrell, Carl Anthony
   and John Dean dispute this claim and point to the allegations as an
   example of the rumors that surrounded the President after his death.

   The January 8, 2006 New York Times Magazine carried an expose of
   Stetson Kennedy, showing that he had systematically exaggerated and
   misrepresented his work for over 50 years, calling to question the
   veracity of many of his sources.

   Melinda Gilpin, site administrator for the Harding Home and Museum in
   Marion, argues that there is no primary evidence of Harding's Klan
   membership and that Harding was the first 20th Century President to
   speak out against the practice of lynching blacks. The 1920 Republican
   Party platform urged Congress to pass laws combating lynching , placing
   Harding's purported membership in conflict with Klan goals. Gilpin also
   points to the Klan's "one drop rule" (that no one who possessed even a
   drop of non- Caucasian blood could join the Klan) was in direct
   conflict with the rumors that swirled around Harding and his supposedly
   mixed race background.

   In 2005, The Straight Dope presented a summary of many of these
   arguments against Harding's membership and added speculation about
   Harding's motives as further evidence that he would not have joined
   (i.e. that while it might have been politically expedient for him to
   join the KKK in public, to do it in private made no sense).

Extramarital affairs

   The extent to which Harding engaged in extra-marital affairs is
   somewhat controversial. It has been recorded in primary documents that
   during his lifetime, Harding had an affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips;
   and Nan Britton wrote The President's Daughter in 1927 documenting her
   affair and child (Elizabeth Ann) with Harding.

   Rumors of the Harding love letters circulated through Marion, Ohio, for
   many years. However, their existence was not confirmed until author
   Francis Russell gained access to them during his research for his book,
   The Shadow of Blooming Grove. The letters were in the possession of
   Phillips. Phillips kept the letters in a box in a closet and was
   reluctant to share them. Russell persuaded her to relent, and the
   letters showed conclusively that Harding had a 15-year relationship
   with Mrs. Phillips, who was then the wife of his friend James Phillips,
   owner of the local department store, the Uhler-Phillips Company. Mrs.
   Phillips was ten years younger than Harding. By 1915, she began
   pressing Harding to leave his wife. When he refused, she left her
   husband and moved to Berlin with her daughter Isabel. However, as the
   United States became increasingly likely to be drawn into World War I,
   Mrs. Phillips moved back to the U.S. and the affair reignited. Harding
   was now a U.S. Senator, and a vote was coming up on a declaration of
   war against Germany.

   Mrs. Phillips threatened to go public with their affair if the Senator
   supported the war, but Harding defied her and voted for war, and Carrie
   did not reveal the scandal to the world. When Harding won the
   Republican presidential nomination in 1920, he did not disclose the
   relationship to party officials. Once they learned of the affair, it
   was too late to find another nominee. To reduce the likelihood of a
   scandal breaking, the Republican National Committee sent Phillips and
   her family on a trip to Japan and paid them over $50,000. She also
   received monthly payments thereafter, becoming the first and only
   person known to have successfully extorted money from a major political
   party.

   The letters Harding wrote to Mrs. Phillips were confiscated at the
   request of the Harding heirs, who requested and received a court
   injunction prohibiting their inclusion in Russell's book. Russell in
   turn left quoted passages from the letters as blank passages in protest
   against the Harding heirs' actions. The Harding-Phillips love letters
   remain under an Ohio court protective order that expires in 2023, 100
   years after Harding's death, after which the content of the letters may
   be published or reviewed.

   Besides Mrs. Phillips, Harding also reportedly had an affair with Nan
   Britton, the daughter of Harding's friend, Dr. Britton of Marion. Nan
   Britton's obsession with Harding started at an early age when she began
   pasting pictures of Senator Harding on her bedroom walls. According to
   Britton's book The President's Daughter, she and Senator Harding
   conceived a daughter, Elizabeth Ann, in January of 1919, in his Senate
   office. Elizabeth Ann was born on October 22, 1919. Harding never met
   Elizabeth Ann but paid large amounts of child support. Harding and
   Britton, according to unsubstantiated reports, continued their affair
   while he was President, using a closet adjacent to the Oval Office for
   privacy. Following Harding's death, Britton unsuccessfully sued the
   estate of Warren G. Harding on behalf of Elizabeth Ann. Under
   cross-examination by Harding heirs' attorney, Grant Mouser (a former
   member of Congress himself), Britton's testimony was riddled with
   inconsistencies, and she lost her case. Britton married a Mr.
   Christian, who adopted Elizabeth Ann. In adulthood Elizabeth Ann
   married (Mrs. Henry Blaesing) and raised a family. During most of her
   life she shied from press coverage about her alleged birthright, and
   refused requests for interviews in her later years. Elizabeth Ann
   Blaesing died on November 17, 2005 in Oregon.

Speaking style

   Enlarge

   Harding was notorious for his verbal gaffes, such as his comment "I
   would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in
   understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common
   good, our tasks will be solved." His errors were compounded by his
   insistence on writing his own speeches. Although it might not have been
   a mispronunciation as some thought, Harding's most famous "mistake" was
   his use of the word "normalcy" when the more correct word to use at the
   time would have been "normality." Harding decided he liked the sound of
   the word and made "Return to Normalcy" a recurring theme. Critic H.L.
   Mencken disagreed, saying of Harding, "He writes the worst English that
   I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it
   reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean
   soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless
   nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags
   itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the
   topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and
   doodle. It is balder and dash." Mencken also coined the term
   "Gamalielese" to refer to Harding's distinctive style of speech. Upon
   Harding's death, poet E. E. Cummings said "The only man, woman or child
   who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors
   is dead."

   Some suggest Harding had a form of aphasia.

Memorials

     * Harding Memorial, Marion, Ohio.
     * Harding County, New Mexico is named in his honour.
     * Ohio Northern University's College of Law was once named after him
       and later renamed.
     * Harding Park Golf Club in San Francisco is named after him.
     * Peace Treaty Marker. Somerville, New Jersey. In 1921, at the estate
       of the New Jersey Governor Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, Warren Harding
       signed the peace treaty which ended America's involvement in World
       War I. Today the estate is long gone and suburban sprawl has
       replaced it with mini-malls. The marker remains in a patch of grass
       near a Burger King parking lot along Rt 28, just North of the
       Somerville traffic circle.

Trivia

     * In Civilization IV, each game concludes with various statistics and
       a scale comparing the player's score to various historical figures.
       Harding has the dubious distinction of being third from the bottom,
       placing below such names as Nero and above Ethelred the Unready and
       Dan Quayle.
     * Harding is the only U.S. president to be elected on his birthday,
       November 2 (it was his 55th).
     * The 1920 presidential election was the only presidential election
       in which the two major party nominees were office holders from the
       same state and had the same profession. Both men were from Ohio and
       were newspaper publishers.
     * Harding was the first U.S. president to ride to his inauguration in
       an automobile.
     * Harding was the first U.S. president to speak on the radio and have
       one in the White House.
     * Harding was known to host poker games at the White House. A legend
       has it that Harding once lost a set of White House china that had
       belonged to President Benjamin Harrison; White House historians
       have since debunked that myth.
     * Norman Thomas, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and
       Socialist Party candidate for president, held a childhood job as a
       newsboy for Harding's Marion Daily Star where he was supervised by
       Florence Harding.
     * In the novel Mumbo-Jumbo by Ishmael Reed, Warren G. Harding is
       featured as a character, and is alleged to have been assassinated
       by a secret society after becoming infected with "Jes' Grew".
     * President Harding and his wife both appear in fictional form as
       supporting characters in the novel Carter Beats the Devil by Glen
       David Gold. Charles Joseph Carter (also known as Carter the Great)
       was a famous stage magician in the early part of the 1900s, and the
       book offers an alternate explanation for the death of Warren
       Harding.
     * The Hardings also figure in Gore Vidal's 1990 novel Hollywood.
     * He was the first U.S. President born after the end of the American
       Civil War.
     * Harding's political rise is discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book "
       Blink". Gladwell attributes Harding's success and popularity to his
       commanding physical appearance and deep gravelly speaking voice,
       which caused people to overlook or forgive his lack of competence.
       Gladwell called this the "Warren G. Harding Error."
     * Harding was declared to be the worst president by Jon Stewart in
       America (The Book).
     * Harding is the subject of the song "Warren Harding" by
       singer-songwriter Al Stewart on his album Past, Present and Future.
     * During the prohibition President Harding kept the White House well
       stocked with bootleg liquor, though, as a Senator, he had voted for
       Prohibition.
     * Corruption in the Harding Administration is investigated by H.L.
       Mencken and James M. Cain in Roy Hoopes' novel, Our Man in
       Washington.
     * Harding had the largest feet of any U.S. President. He wore size 14
       shoes.

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