Harding 2012
I’ve always said that Republican presidents don’t get the recognition they deserve until they die. Warren G. Harding is the exception to that rule. Immensely popular in the public and in the press during his short time in office, his reputation began a rapid and unstoppable decline immediately following his death. Today, he is almost universally considered the worst of the worst. Phillip G. Payne’s new book, Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy examines why.
I picked up this book because I have become something of a Harding fan in recent years. His “Return to Normalcy” campaign in 1920, managed in part by RNC Chairman Will Hays (yes, that Will Hays), suddenly seems relevant and understandable now that our country is again engaged in long wars and massive government expansion. I created a Warren G. Harding Facebook page for the fun of it last year, and it quickly attracted over two hundred supporters—a surprise given that I didn’t know there was even such a thing as a “Warren G. Harding supporter” anywhere, let alone on Facebook.
Phillip Payne may or may not be one of those supporters—his book presents itself more as a work of historiography than a defense of the disgraced president. But one cannot help but suspect, given Payne’s previous work for the Ohio Historical Society at Warren Harding’s former home, that he is more sympathetically inclined than most historians to the Harding presidency. His work is certainly more thoughtful and detailed than most conventional analyses, which tend to brusquely dismiss the president as corrupt, stupid, and unfit to serve.
Payne offers a number of explanations for the negative public memory of Harding, including, of course, the fact that all of the scandals of his administration were revealed shortly after his death, and the President, being dead and all, was unable to defend himself when his political opponents made him a punching bag and his Republican successors made him a scapegoat. Payne also touches briefly on the fact that most historians, charged with documenting Harding’s story, tended to be Wilsonian progressives who hated everything he championed.
The book’s most important theme, however, is not of the present public’s perception of Warren Harding, but of the perception of his contemporaries. Many historians do not attempt to explain Harding’s extreme popularity (his election was the largest presidential landslide of its time) beyond quoting the oft-cited line that “he looked like a president ought to look.” The American people, in a fit of stupidity, the historians imply, elected an imbecile based purely on his superficial qualities.
What those historians don’t want to face is the fact that Harding was popular not because of personality, but because of policy. Harding was what was known as a civic booster; that is, a business leader whose focus was on improving his small hometown of Marion, Ohio—the story of which Payne details extensively in his book. Harding’s national message had a local focus. He was pro-business, but believed that business had a responsibility to promote community. His small town, pro-enterprise message put him in stark contrast with the internationalism and restrictive government of the previous eight years under Woodrow Wilson. And by 1920, Americans were ready not for more things new, but for a return to the old—not on a new focus on being “citizens of the world,” but a refocus on being citizens of their neglected local communities.
Modern conservatives could learn a lesson from Harding’s campaign. Too often, the pro-business stance of conservatism is seen as turning a blind eye to the excesses of greedy executives. As President Obama unleashes an agenda that is as nationalistic and destructive to free enterprise as anything that Wilson ever did, conservatives would do well to emulate the 1920 message that was not just a praise of capitalism, but an emphasis on the role of civic involvement in a capitalist society. People care about what happens in their local communities. Today, more than ever, small communities (and large) are deteriorating. President Obama is doing nothing to solve the problem, and thus far, neither are the Republicans. If the party can give voice to those concerns, they will do well in the future.
In the coming election seasons, voters may well tire of nostrums and long for normalcy. Conservatives need to exploit that. Phillip Payne’s new book details the troubles and historical complexities of a disgraced presidency—but it also does more than any other to provide a blueprint of a successful conservative message.
Related posts:
Hello sir, I am glad that you seem to be a traditionalist conservative! – the lack of that true-blue philosophy within our generation has been troubling, for years.
Speaking of President Harding, how do you feel about Presidents Hoover [who was mentioned in a conversation at the recent YRNF Convention*] (and especially!) Calvin Coolidge?
[continued...]
I coincidentally (*) found this website just the other day, through someone’s Tweet (perhaps it was from Tammy Bruce – who I am not a fan of…). That Twitter page I came across linked to this past column of yours.
[continued...]
* This is coincidental, because at the recent YRNF Convention, I was particularly looking for CRs who were in attendance, but also people from our CRNC Midwest Caucus – which the Hoosier State is in… But I was also particularly interested in speaking to Hoosiers, since the Convention was being held there, and also due to my connections with Josh Claybourn (and the former “Hoosier Review” network) and Travis Hankins, who may soon join my own U.S. Representative (who incidentally spoke at the Convention earlier that same day), as the only (other) member of Congress “born in the 1980s.”
The Indiana CR who I spoke to is the Vice-Chairman of the YR chapter in his home county (which is that 9th Congressional District of Indiana), but is also the Chairman of the CR chapter at a university, which I had just mentioned in a voicemail recap… It was “Washburn, or Wabash, or something like that…” . And then, I happen to come across that link – to a conservative publication at that very same university. (When I saw “Wabash,” I had to check, to make sure this is an Indiana college, and I had the same school.)
I am starting a new blog, which will be focused on the states of the Midwest Caucus, and the conservative issues and GOP candidates/causes within them. I’m glad that I’ve found another fine weblog, for the sidebar there, and I hope to be working with the Wabash conservatives, in the near future!
Please keep up the GREAT work, with what you guys are doing!
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words, Aakash. I guess it’s a small world. The Wabash student you met at the convention was Andrew Forrester. He’s the Chairman of the Will Hays College Republicans and the Business Manager for the Wabash Conservative Union. He told me that he’s thinking of blogging his thoughts on the convention soon, so be sure to be on the look out for that post!
Calvin Coolidge, in my opinion, was a good president, but he shouldn’t get all the credit for the Roaring 20s, as he often does. Much of it belongs to Harding. President Harding inherited an economic disaster from Woodrow Wilson. GDP had contracted by 24%. Herbert Hoover, who was his Commerce Secretary at the time, urged the President for government intervention (as he would attempt when he faced a depression a decade later). Harding responded by ignoring Hoover, cutting taxes and creating the Bureau of Budget in order to control spending. In short order the economy was on a huge rebound.
So: Warren Harding would have been great, had it not been for his poor administrative skills and unfortunate scandals; Coolidge is good in that he preserved what Harding began; and Hoover was a liberal who has been branded “conservative” by liberal historians for whom “conservative” and “really bad president” are synonymous.
Thanks again for your comments, and keep in touch!
Oh, and I’m probably not much of a “traditionalist conservative.” I’m really more of a neocon when it comes to foreign affairs, so my interest in Harding doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything. But I’m being pushed farther and farther in the economic “traditionalist” direction by Barack Obama’s agenda, as is, I believe, the rest of the Republican Party. I probably would have supported Mark Sanford in 2012, had he not turned out to be a horrible adulturer (like Harding, now that I think about it…).