Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular U.S. presidents to that point. After his death, a number of scandals—including Teapot Dome—came to light, as did his extramarital affair with Nan Britton; each eroded his popular regard. Harding is often rated as one of the worst presidents in historical rankings.
Harding lived in rural Ohio all his life, except when political service took him elsewhere. As a young man, he bought The Marion Star and built it into a successful newspaper. In 1899, he was elected to the Ohio State Senate; he spent four years there, then was elected lieutenant governor. He was defeated for governor in 1910, but was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914. He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, and he was considered a long shot until after the convention began. The leading candidates could not gain the needed majority, and the convention deadlocked. Harding's support gradually grew until he was nominated on the tenth ballot. He conducted a front porch campaign, remaining for the most part in Marion and allowing the people to come to him, and running on a theme of a return to normalcy of the pre-World War I period. He won in a landslide over Democrat James M. Cox and the then imprisoned Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs and became the first sitting senator to be elected president.
Harding appointed a number of well-regarded figures to his cabinet, including Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Herbert Hoover at the Department of Commerce, and Charles Evans Hughes at the State Department. A major foreign policy achievement came with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world's major naval powers agreed on a naval limitations program that lasted a decade. Harding released political prisoners who had been arrested for their opposition to World War I. His cabinet members Albert B. Fall (Interior Secretary) and Harry Daugherty (Attorney General) were each later tried for corruption in office; these and other scandals greatly damaged Harding's posthumous reputation. Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.
Early life and career
Childhood and education
Warren Harding was born on November 2, 1865, in Blooming Grove, Ohio. Nicknamed "Winnie" as a small child, he was the eldest of eight children born to George Tryon Harding (1843–1928; usually known as Tryon) and Phoebe Elizabeth (née Dickerson) Harding (1843–1910). Phoebe was a state-licensed midwife. Tryon farmed and taught school near Mount Gilead, Ohio. Through apprenticeship, study and a year of medical school, Tryon became a doctor and started a small practice. Some of Harding's mother's ancestors were Dutch, including the well-known Van Kirk family. Harding also had ancestors from England, Wales and Scotland.
It was rumored by a political opponent in Blooming Grove that one of Harding's great-grandmothers was African American. His great-great grandfather Amos Harding claimed that a thief, who had been caught in the act by the family, started the rumor in an attempt at extortion or revenge. In 2015, genetic testing of Harding's descendants determined, with more than a 95% chance of accuracy, that he lacked sub-Saharan African forebears within four generations.
In 1870, the Harding family, who were abolitionists, moved to Caledonia, Ohio, where Tryon acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper. At The Argus, Harding, from the age of 11, learned the basics of the newspaper business. In late 1879, at the age of 14, Harding enrolled at his father's alma mater – Ohio Central College in Iberia – where he proved an adept student. He and a friend put out a small newspaper, the Iberia Spectator, during their final year at Ohio Central, intended to appeal to both the college and the town. During his final year, the Harding family moved to Marion, Ohio, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Caledonia, and when he graduated in 1882, he joined them there.
Editor
In Harding's youth, the majority of the population still lived on farms and in small towns. He would spend much of his life in Marion, a small city in rural Ohio, and would become closely associated with it. When Harding rose to high office, he made clear his love of Marion and its way of life, telling of the many young Marionites who had left and enjoyed success elsewhere, while suggesting that the man, once the "pride of the school", who had remained behind and become a janitor, was "the happiest one of the lot".
Upon graduating, Harding had stints as a teacher and as an insurance man, and made a brief attempt at studying law. He then raised $300 (equivalent to $8,232 in 2019) in partnership with others to purchase a failing newspaper, The Marion Star, weakest of the growing city's three papers, and its only daily. The 18-year-old Harding used the railroad pass that came with the paper to attend the 1884 Republican National Convention, where he hobnobbed with better-known journalists and supported the presidential nominee, former Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Harding returned from Chicago to find that the paper had been reclaimed by the sheriff. During the election campaign, Harding worked for the Marion Democratic Mirror and was annoyed at having to praise the Democratic presidential nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland, who won the election. Afterward, with the financial aid of his father, the budding newspaperman redeemed the paper.
Through the later years of the 1880s, Harding built the Star. The city of Marion tended to vote Republican (as did Ohio), but Marion County was Democratic. Accordingly, Harding adopted a tempered editorial stance, declaring the daily Star nonpartisan and circulating a weekly edition that was moderate Republican. This policy attracted advertisers and put the town's Republican weekly out of business. According to his biographer, Andrew Sinclair:
The success of Harding with the Star was certainly in the model of Horatio Alger. He started with nothing, and through working, stalling, bluffing, withholding payments, borrowing back wages, boasting, and manipulating, he turned a dying rag into a powerful small-town newspaper. Much of his success had to do with his good looks, affability, enthusiasm, and persistence, but he was also lucky. As Machiavelli once pointed out, cleverness will take a man far, but he cannot do without good fortune.
The population of Marion grew from 4,000 in 1880 to twice that in 1890, increasing to 12,000 by 1900. This growth helped the Star, and Harding did his best to promote the city, purchasing stock in many local enterprises. Although a few of these turned out badly, he was in general successful as an investor, leaving an estate of $850,000 in 1923 (equivalent to $12.75 million in 2019). According to Harding biographer and former White House Counsel John Dean, Harding's "civic influence was that of an activist who used his editorial page to effectively keep his nose—and a prodding voice—in all the town's public business". To date, Harding is the only U.S. president to have had journalism experience. He became an ardent supporter of Governor Joseph B. Foraker, a Republican.
Harding first came to know Florence Kling, five years older than he, as the daughter of a local banker and developer. Amos Kling was a man accustomed to getting his way, but Harding attacked him relentlessly in the paper. Amos involved Florence in all his affairs, taking her to work from the time she could walk. As hard-headed as her father, Florence came into conflict with him after returning from music college. After she eloped with Pete deWolfe, and returned to Marion without deWolfe, but with an infant called Marshall, Amos agreed to raise the boy, but would not support Florence, who made a living as a piano teacher. One of her students was Harding's sister Charity. By 1886, Florence Kling had obtained a divorce, and she and Harding were courting, though who was pursuing whom is uncertain, depending on who later told the story of their romance.
A truce between the Klings was snuffed out by the budding match. Amos believed that the Hardings had African American blood, and was also offended by Harding's editorial stances. He started to spread rumors of Harding's supposed black heritage, and encouraged local businessmen to boycott Harding's business interests. When Harding found out what Kling was doing, he warned Kling "that he would beat the tar out of the little man if he didn't cease."
The Hardings were married on July 8, 1891, at their new home on Mount Vernon Avenue in Marion, which they had designed together in the Queen Anne style. The marriage produced no children. Harding affectionately called his wife "the Duchess" for a character in a serial from The New York Sun who kept a close eye on "the Duke" and their money.
Florence Harding became deeply involved in her husband's career, both at the Star and after he entered politics. Exhibiting her father's determination and business sense, she helped turn the Star into a profitable enterprise through her tight management of the paper's circulation department. She has been credited with helping Harding achieve more than he might have alone; some have suggested that she pushed him all the way to the White House.
Start in politics
Soon after purchasing the Star, Harding turned his attention to politics, supporting Foraker in his first successful bid for governor in 1885. Foraker was part of the war generation that challenged older Ohio Republicans, such as Senator John Sherman, for control of state politics. Harding, always a party loyalist, supported Foraker in the complex internecine warfare that was Ohio Republican politics. Harding was willing to tolerate Democrats, as necessary to a two-party system, but had only contempt for those who bolted the Republican Party to join third-party movements. He was a delegate to the Republican state convention in 1888, at the age of 22, representing Marion County, and would be elected a delegate in most years until becoming president.
Harding's success as an editor took a toll on his health. Five times between 1889 (when he was 23) and 1901, he spent time at the Battle Creek Sanitorium for reasons Sinclair described as "fatigue, overstrain, and nervous illnesses". Dean ties these visits to early occurrences of the heart ailment that would kill Harding in 1923. During one such absence from Marion, in 1894, the Star's business manager quit. Florence Harding took his place. She became her husband's top assistant at the Star on the business side, maintaining her role until the Hardings moved to Washington in 1915. Her competence allowed Harding to travel to make speeches – his use of the free railroad pass increased greatly after his marriage. Florence Harding practiced strict economy and wrote of Harding, "he does well when he listens to me and poorly when he does not.”
In 1892, Harding traveled to Washington, where he met Democratic Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan, and listened to the "Boy Orator of the Platte" speak on the floor of the House of Representatives. Harding traveled to Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Both visits were without Florence. Democrats generally won Marion County's offices; when Harding ran for auditor in 1895, he lost, but did better than expected. The following year, Harding was one of many orators who spoke across Ohio as part of the campaign of the Republican presidential candidate, that state's former governor, William McKinley. According to Dean, "while working for McKinley [Harding] began making a name for himself through Ohio".
Rising politician (1897–1919)
State senator
Harding wished to try again for elective office. Though a longtime admirer of Foraker (by then a U.S. senator), he had been careful to maintain good relations with the party faction led by the state's other U.S. senator, Mark Hanna, McKinley's political manager and chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Both Foraker and Hanna supported Harding for state Senate in 1899; he gained the Republican nomination and was easily elected to a two-year term.
Harding began his four years as a state senator as a political unknown; he ended them as one of the most popular figures in the Ohio Republican Party. He always appeared calm and displayed humility, characteristics that endeared him to fellow Republicans even as he passed them in his political rise. Legislative leaders consulted him on difficult problems. It was usual at that time for state senators in Ohio to serve only one term, but Harding gained renomination in 1901. After the assassination of McKinley in September (he was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt), much of the appetite for politics was temporarily lost in Ohio. In November, Harding won a second term, more than doubling his margin of victory to 3,563 votes.
Like most politicians of his time, Harding accepted that patronage and graft would be used to repay political favors. He arranged for his sister Mary (who was legally blind) to be appointed as a teacher at the Ohio School for the Blind, although there were better-qualified candidates. In another trade, he offered publicity in his newspaper in exchange for free railroad passes for himself and his family. According to Sinclair, "it is doubtful that Harding ever thought there was anything dishonest in accepting the perquisites of position or office. Patronage and favors seemed the normal reward for party service in the days of Hanna."
Soon after Harding's initial election as senator, he met Harry M. Daugherty, who would take a major role in his political career. A perennial candidate for office who served two terms in the state House of Representatives in the early 1890s, Daugherty had become a political fixer and lobbyist in the state capital of Columbus. After first meeting and talking with Harding, Daugherty commented, "Gee, what a great-looking President he'd make."
Ohio state leader
In early 1903, Harding announced he would run for Governor of Ohio, prompted by the withdrawal of the leading candidate, Congressman Charles W. F. Dick. Hanna and George Cox felt that Harding was not electable due to his work with Foraker—as the Progressive Era commenced, the public was starting to take a dimmer view of the trading of political favors and of bosses such as Cox. Accordingly, they persuaded Cleveland banker Myron T. Herrick, a friend of McKinley's, to run. Herrick was also better-placed to take votes away from the likely Democratic candidate, reforming Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson. With little chance at the gubernatorial nomination, Harding sought nomination as lieutenant governor, and both Herrick and Harding were nominated by acclamation. Foraker and Hanna (who died of typhoid fever in February 1904) both campaigned for what was dubbed the Four-H ticket. Herrick and Harding won by overwhelming margins.
Once he and Harding were inaugurated, Herrick made ill-advised decisions that turned crucial Republican constituencies against him, alienating farmers by opposing the establishment of an agricultural college. On the other hand, according to Sinclair, "Harding had little to do, and he did it very well". His responsibility to preside over the state Senate allowed him to increase his growing network of political contacts. Harding and others envisioned a successful gubernatorial run in 1905, but Herrick refused to stand aside. In early 1905, Harding announced he would accept nomination as governor if offered, but faced with the anger of leaders such as Cox, Foraker and Dick (Hanna's replacement in the Senate), announced he would seek no office in 1905. Herrick was defeated, but his new running mate, Andrew L. Harris, was elected, and succeeded as governor after five months in office on the death of Democrat John M. Pattison. One Republican official wrote to Harding, "Aren't you sorry Dick wouldn't let you run for Lieutenant Governor?"
In addition to helping pick a president, Ohio voters in 1908 were to choose the legislators who would decide whether to re-elect Foraker. The senator had quarreled with President Roosevelt over the Brownsville Affair. Though Foraker had little chance of winning, he sought the Republican presidential nomination against his fellow Cincinnatian, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who was Roosevelt's chosen successor. On January 6, 1908, Harding's Star endorsed Foraker and upbraided Roosevelt for trying to destroy the senator's career over a matter of conscience. On January 22, Harding in the Star reversed course and declared for Taft, deeming Foraker defeated. According to Sinclair, Harding's change to Taft "was not ... because he saw the light but because he felt the heat". Jumping on the Taft bandwagon allowed Harding to survive his patron's disaster—Foraker failed to gain the presidential nomination, and was defeated for a third term as senator. Also helpful in saving Harding's career was the fact that he was popular with, and had done favors for, the more progressive forces that now controlled the Ohio Republican Party.
Harding sought and gained the 1910 Republican gubernatorial nomination. At that time, the party was deeply divided between progressive and conservative wings, and could not defeat the united Democrats; he lost the election to incumbent Judson Harmon. Harry Daugherty managed Harding's campaign, but the defeated candidate did not hold the loss against him. Despite the growing rift between them, both President Taft and former president Roosevelt came to Ohio to campaign for Harding, but their quarrels split the Republican Party and helped assure Harding's defeat.
The party split grew, and in 1912, Taft and Roosevelt were rivals for the Republican nomination. The 1912 Republican National Convention was bitterly divided. At Taft's request, Harding gave a speech nominating the president, but the angry delegates were not receptive to Harding's oratory. Taft was renominated, but Roosevelt supporters bolted the party. Harding, as a loyal Republican, supported Taft. The Republican vote was split between Taft, the party's official candidate, and Roosevelt, running under the label of the Progressive Party. This allowed the Democratic candidate, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, to be elected.
U.S. Senator
Election of 1914
Congressman Theodore Burton had been elected as senator in Foraker's place in 1909, and announced that he would seek a second term in the 1914 elections. By this time, the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had been ratified, giving the people the right to elect senators, and Ohio had instituted primary elections for the office. Foraker and former congressman Ralph D. Cole also entered the Republican primary. When Burton withdrew, Foraker became the favorite, but his Old Guard Republicanism was deemed outdated, and Harding was urged to enter the race. Daugherty claimed credit for persuading Harding to run, "I found him like a turtle sunning himself on a log, and I pushed him into the water." According to Harding biographer Randolph Downes, "he put on a campaign of such sweetness and light as would have won the plaudits of the angels. It was calculated to offend nobody except Democrats." Although Harding did not attack Foraker, his supporters had no such scruples. Harding won the primary by 12,000 votes over Foraker.
Harding's general election opponent was Ohio Attorney General Timothy Hogan, who had risen to statewide office despite widespread prejudice against Roman Catholics in rural areas. In 1914, the start of World War I and the prospect of a Catholic senator from Ohio increased nativist sentiment. Propaganda sheets with names like The Menace and The Defender contained warnings that Hogan was the vanguard in a plot led by Pope Benedict XV through the Knights of Columbus to control Ohio. Harding did not attack Hogan (an old friend) on this or most other issues, but he did not denounce the nativist hatred for his opponent.
Harding's conciliatory campaigning style aided him; one Harding friend deemed the candidate's stump speech during the 1914 fall campaign as "a rambling, high-sounding mixture of platitudes, patriotism, and pure nonsense". Dean notes, "Harding used his oratory to good effect; it got him elected, making as few enemies as possible in the process." Harding won by over 100,000 votes in a landslide that also swept into office a Republican governor, Frank B. Willis.
Junior senator
When Harding joined the U.S. Senate, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and were led by President Wilson. As a junior senator in the minority, Harding received unimportant committee assignments, but carried out those duties assiduously. He was a safe, conservative, Republican vote. As during his time in the Ohio Senate, Harding came to be widely liked.
On two issues, women's suffrage, and the prohibition of alcohol, where picking the wrong side would have damaged his presidential prospects in 1920, he prospered by taking nuanced positions. As senator-elect, he indicated that he could not support votes for women until Ohio did. Increased support for suffrage there and among Senate Republicans meant that by the time Congress voted on the issue, Harding was a firm supporter. Harding, who drank, initially voted against banning alcohol. He voted for the Eighteenth Amendment, which imposed Prohibition, after successfully moving to modify it by placing a time limit on ratification, which was expected to kill it. Once it was ratified anyway, Harding voted to override Wilson's veto of the Volstead Bill, which implemented the amendment, assuring the support of the Anti-Saloon League.
Harding, as a politician respected by both Republicans and Progressives, was asked to be temporary chairman of the 1916 Republican National Convention and to deliver the keynote address. He urged delegates to stand as a united party. The convention nominated Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Harding reached out to Roosevelt once the former president declined the 1916 Progressive nomination, a refusal that effectively scuttled that party. In the November 1916 presidential election, despite increasing Republican unity, Hughes was narrowly defeated by Wilson.
Harding spoke and voted in favor of the resolution of war requested by Wilson in April 1917 that plunged the United States into World War I. In August, Harding argued for giving Wilson almost dictatorial powers, stating that democracy had little place in time of war. Harding voted for most war legislation, including the Espionage Act of 1917, which restricted civil liberties, though he opposed the excess profits tax as anti-business. In May 1918, Harding, less enthusiastic about Wilson, opposed a bill to expand the president's powers.
In the 1918 midterm congressional elections, held just before the armistice, Republicans narrowly took control of the Senate. Harding was appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Wilson took no senators with him to the Paris Peace Conference, confident that he could force what became the Treaty of Versailles through the Senate by appealing to the people. When he returned with a single treaty establishing both peace and a League of Nations, the country was overwhelmingly on his side. Many senators disliked Article X of the League Covenant, that committed signatories to the defense of any member nation that was attacked, seeing it as forcing the United States to war without the assent of Congress. Harding was one of 39 senators who signed a round-robin letter opposing the League. When Wilson invited the Foreign Relations Committee to the White House to informally discuss the treaty, Harding ably questioned Wilson about Article X; the president evaded his inquiries. The Senate debated Versailles in September 1919, and Harding made a major speech against it. By then, Wilson had suffered a stroke while on a speaking tour. With an incapacitated president in the White House and less support in the country, the treaty was defeated.
Presidential election of 1920
Primary campaign
With most Progressives having rejoined the Republican Party, their former leader, Theodore Roosevelt, was deemed likely to make a third run for the White House in 1920, and was the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination. These plans ended when Roosevelt suddenly died on January 6, 1919. A number of candidates quickly emerged, including General Leonard Wood, Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, California Senator Hiram Johnson, and a host of relatively minor possibilities such as Herbert Hoover (renowned for his World War I relief work), Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, and General John J. Pershing.
Harding, while he wanted to be president, was as much motivated in entering the race by his desire to keep control of Ohio Republican politics, enabling his re-election to the Senate in 1920. Among those coveting Harding's seat were former governor Willis (he had been defeated by James M. Cox in 1916) and Colonel William Cooper Procter (head of Procter & Gamble). On December 17, 1919, Harding made a low-key announcement of his presidential candidacy. Leading Republicans disliked Wood and Johnson, both of the progressive faction of the party, and Lowden, who had an independent streak, was deemed little better. Harding was far more acceptable to the "Old Guard" leaders of the party.
Daugherty, who became Harding's campaign manager, was sure none of the other candidates could garner a majority. His strategy was to make Harding an acceptable choice to delegates once the leaders faltered. Daugherty established a Harding for president campaign office in Washington (run by his confidant, Jess Smith), and worked to manage a network of Harding friends and supporters, including Frank Scobey of Texas (clerk of the Ohio State Senate during Harding's years there). Harding worked to shore up his support through incessant letter-writing. Despite the candidate's work, according to Russell, "without Daugherty's Mephistophelean efforts, Harding would never have stumbled forward to the nomination."
America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
There were only 16 presidential primary states in 1920, of which the most crucial to Harding was Ohio. Harding had to have some loyalists at the convention to have any chance of nomination, and the Wood campaign hoped to knock Harding out of the race by taking Ohio. Wood campaigned in the state, and his supporter, Procter, spent large sums; Harding spoke in the non-confrontational style he had adopted in 1914. Harding and Daugherty were so confident of sweeping Ohio's 48 delegates that the candidate went on to the next state, Indiana, before the April 27 Ohio primary. Harding carried Ohio by only 15,000 votes over Wood, taking less than half the total vote, and won only 39 of 48 delegates. In Indiana, Harding finished fourth, with less than ten percent of the vote, and failed to win a single delegate. He was willing to give up and have Daugherty file his re-election papers for the Senate, but Florence Harding grabbed the phone from his hand, "Warren Harding, what are you doing? Give up? Not until the convention is over. Think of your friends in Ohio!" On learning that Daugherty had left the phone line, the future First Lady retorted, "Well, you tell Harry Daugherty for me that we're in this fight until Hell freezes over."
After he recovered from the shock of the poor results, Harding traveled to Boston, where he delivered a speech that according to Dean, "would resonate throughout the 1920 campaign and history." There, he stated that "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration." Dean notes, "Harding, more than the other aspirants, was reading the nation's pulse correctly.”
Convention
The 1920 Republican National Convention opened at the Chicago Coliseum on June 8, 1920, assembling delegates who were bitterly divided, most recently over the results of a Senate investigation into campaign spending, which had just been released. That report found that Wood had spent $1.8 million (equivalent to $22.97 million in 2019), lending substance to Johnson's claims that Wood was trying to buy the presidency. Some of the $600,000 that Lowden had spent had wound up in the pockets of two convention delegates. Johnson had spent $194,000, and Harding $113,000. Johnson was deemed to be behind the inquiry, and the rage of the Lowden and Wood factions put an end to any possible compromise among the frontrunners. Of the almost 1,000 delegates, 27 were women—the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, guaranteeing women the vote, was within one state of ratification, and would pass before the end of August. The convention had no boss, most uninstructed delegates voted as they pleased, and with a Democrat in the White House, the party's leaders could not use patronage to get their way.
Reporters deemed Harding unlikely to be nominated due to his poor showing in the primaries, and relegated him to a place among the dark horses. Harding, who like the other candidates was in Chicago supervising his campaign, had finished sixth in the final public opinion poll, behind the three main candidates as well as former Justice Hughes and Herbert Hoover, and only slightly ahead of Coolidge.
After the convention dealt with other matters, the nominations for president opened on the morning of Friday, June 11. Harding had asked Willis to place his name in nomination, and the former governor responded with a speech popular among the delegates, both for its folksiness and for its brevity in the intense Chicago heat. Reporter Mark Sullivan, who was present, called it a splendid combination of "oratory, grand opera, and hog calling." Willis confided, leaning over the podium railing, "Say, boys—and girls too—why not name Warren Harding?" The laughter and applause that followed created a warm feeling for Harding.
I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballots, but I think we can well afford to take chances that about eleven minutes after two o'clock on Friday morning at the convention, when fifteen or twenty men, somewhat weary, are sitting around a table, some one of them will say: "Who will we nominate?" At that decisive time, the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him and afford to abide by the result.
Four ballots were taken on the afternoon of June 11, and they revealed a deadlock. With 493 votes needed to nominate, Wood was the closest with 3141⁄2; Lowdon had 2891⁄2. The best Harding had done was 651⁄2. Chairman Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, the Senate Majority Leader, adjourned the convention about 7 p.m.
The night of June 11–12, 1920, would become famous in political history as the night of the "smoke-filled room," in which, legend has it, party elders agreed to force the convention to nominate Harding. Historians have focused on the talks held in the suite of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Will Hays at the Blackstone Hotel, at which senators and others came and went, and numerous possible candidates were discussed. Utah Senator Reed Smoot, before his departure early in the evening, backed Harding, telling Hays and the others that as the Democrats were likely to nominate Governor Cox, they should pick Harding to win Ohio. Smoot also told The New York Times that there had been an agreement to nominate Harding, but that it would not be done for several ballots yet. This was not true: a number of participants backed Harding (others supported his rivals), but there was no pact to nominate him, and the senators had little power to enforce any agreement. Two other participants in the smoke-filled room discussions, Kansas Senator Charles Curtis and Colonel George Brinton McClellan Harvey, a close friend of Hays, predicted to the press that Harding would be nominated because of the liabilities of the other candidates.
Colonel Harvey's account of the smoke-filled room had Harding being sent for in the early morning hours, to be informed by Harvey that the Ohioan would be the candidate. Harvey stated he asked if there was anything in Harding's background that might harm his candidacy, to which the senator, who had had at least one extramarital affair, replied there was not. Harding biographer Charles W. Murray noted that there is no evidence besides Harvey's word that Harding went to the Hays suite that night, and that other participants denied that Harding was there. Harding was so uncertain of victory that he filed for re-election to the Senate, though Daugherty continued to urge delegates to support him.
The reassembled delegates had heard rumors that Harding was the choice of a cabal of senators. Although this was not true, delegates believed it, and sought a way out by voting for Harding. When balloting resumed on the morning of June 12, Harding gained votes on each of the next four ballots, rising to 1331⁄2 as the two front runners saw little change. Lodge then declared a three-hour recess, to the outrage of Daugherty, who raced to the podium, and confronted him, "You cannot defeat this man this way! The motion was not carried! You cannot defeat this man!" Lodge and others used the break to try to stop the Harding momentum and make RNC Chairman Hays the nominee, a scheme Hays refused to have anything to do with. The ninth ballot, after some initial suspense, saw delegation after delegation break for Harding, who took the lead with 3741⁄2 votes to 249 for Wood and 1211⁄2 for Lowden (Johnson had 83). Lowden released his delegates to Harding, and the tenth ballot, held at 6 p.m., was a mere formality, with Harding finishing with 6721⁄5 votes to 156 for Wood. The nomination was made unanimous. The delegates, desperate to leave town before they incurred more hotel expenses, then proceeded to the vice presidential nomination. Harding wanted Senator Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin, who was unwilling to run, but before Lenroot's name could be withdrawn and another candidate decided on, an Oregon delegate proposed Governor Coolidge, which was met with a roar of approval from the delegates. Coolidge, popular for his role in breaking the Boston police strike of 1919, was nominated for vice president, receiving two and a fraction votes more than Harding had. James Morgan wrote in The Boston Globe: "The delegates would not listen to remaining in Chicago over Sunday ... the President makers did not have a clean shirt. On such things, Rollo, turns the destiny of nations."
General election campaign
The Harding/Coolidge ticket was quickly backed by Republican newspapers, but those of other viewpoints expressed disappointment. The New York World found Harding the least-qualified candidate since James Buchanan, deeming the Ohio senator a "weak and mediocre" man who "never had an original idea." The Hearst newspapers called Harding "the flag-bearer of a new Senatorial autocracy." The New York Times described the Republican presidential candidate as "a very respectable Ohio politician of the second class."
The Democratic National Convention opened in San Francisco on June 28, 1920, under a shadow cast by Woodrow Wilson, who wished to be nominated for a third term. Delegates were convinced Wilson's health would not permit him to serve, and looked elsewhere for a candidate. Former Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo was a major contender, but he was Wilson's son-in-law, and refused to consider a nomination so long as the president wanted it. Many at the convention voted for McAdoo anyway, and a deadlock ensued with Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. On the 44th ballot, the Democrats nominated Governor Cox for president, with his running mate Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Cox was, when not in politics, a newspaper owner and editor, this placed two Ohio editors against each other for the presidency, and some complained there was no real political choice. Both Cox and Harding were economic conservatives, and were reluctant progressives at best.
Harding elected to conduct a front porch campaign, like McKinley in 1896. Some years earlier, Harding had had his front porch remodeled to resemble McKinley's, which his neighbors felt signified presidential ambitions. The candidate remained at home in Marion, and gave addresses to visiting delegations. In the meantime, Cox and Roosevelt stumped the nation, giving hundreds of speeches. Coolidge spoke in the Northeast, later on in the South, and was not a significant factor in the election.
In Marion, Harding ran his campaign. As a newspaperman himself, he fell into easy camaraderie with the press covering him, enjoying a relationship few presidents have equaled. His "return to normalcy" theme was aided by the atmosphere that Marion provided, an orderly place that induced nostalgia in many voters. The front porch campaign allowed Harding to avoid mistakes, and as time dwindled towards the election, his strength grew. The travels of the Democratic candidates eventually caused Harding to make several short speaking tours, but for the most part, he remained in Marion. America had no need for another Wilson, Harding argued, appealing for a president "near the normal.”
Harding's vague oratory irritated some; McAdoo described a typical Harding speech as "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and over work." H. L. Mencken concurred, "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 kind of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm ... of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of tosh. It is rumble and bumble. It is balder and dash." The New York Times took a more positive view of Harding's speeches, stating that in them the majority of people could find "a reflection of their own indeterminate thoughts.”
Wilson had stated that the 1920 election would be a "great and solemn referendum" on the League of Nations, making it difficult for Cox to maneuver on the issue—although Roosevelt strongly supported the League, Cox was less enthusiastic. Harding opposed entry into the League of Nations as negotiated by Wilson, but favored an "association of nations," based on the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. This was general enough to satisfy most Republicans, and only a few bolted the party over this issue. By October, Cox had realized there was widespread public opposition to Article X, and stated that reservations to the treaty might be necessary; this shift allowed Harding to say no more on the subject.
The RNC hired Albert Lasker, an advertising executive from Chicago, to publicize Harding, and Lasker unleashed a broad-based advertising campaign that used many now-standard advertising techniques for the first time in a presidential campaign. Lasker's approach included newsreels and sound recordings. Visitors to Marion had their photographs taken with Senator and Mrs. Harding, and copies were sent to their hometown newspapers. Billboard posters, newspapers and magazines were employed in addition to motion pictures. Telemarketers were used to make phone calls with scripted dialogues to promote Harding.
During the campaign, opponents spread old rumors that Harding's great-great-grandfather was a West Indian black person and that other blacks might be found in his family tree. Harding's campaign manager rejected the accusations. Wooster College professor William Estabrook Chancellor publicized the rumors, based on supposed family research, but perhaps reflecting no more than local gossip.
1920 electoral vote results
By Election Day, November 2, 1920, few had any doubts that the Republican ticket would win. Harding received 60.2 percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage since the evolution of the two-party system, and 404 electoral votes. Cox received 34 percent of the national vote and 127 electoral votes. Campaigning from a federal prison where he was serving a sentence for opposing the war, Socialist Eugene V. Debs received 3 percent of the national vote. The Republicans greatly increased their majority in each house of Congress.
President (1921–1923)
Inauguration and appointments
Harding was sworn in March 4, 1921, in the presence of his wife and father. Harding preferred a low-key inauguration, without the customary parade, leaving only the swearing-in ceremony and a brief reception at the White House. In his inaugural address he declared, "Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much from the government and at the same time do too little for it."
After the election, Harding had announced he was going on vacation, and that no decisions about appointments would be made until he returned to Marion in December. He went to Texas, where he fished and played golf with his friend Frank Scobey (soon to be Director of the Mint), then took ship for the Panama Canal Zone. He went to Washington, where he was given a hero's welcome[e] when Congress opened in early December as the first sitting senator to be elected to the White House. Back in Ohio, he planned to consult the "best minds" of the country on appointments, and they dutifully journeyed to Marion to offer their counsel.
Harding chose pro-League Charles Evans Hughes as his Secretary of State, ignoring advice from Senator Lodge and others. After Charles G. Dawes declined the Treasury position, Harding asked Pittsburgh banker Andrew W. Mellon, one of the richest people in the country; he agreed. Harding appointed Herbert Hoover as United States Secretary of Commerce. RNC Chairman Will Hays was made Postmaster General, then a cabinet post; he would leave after a year in the position to become chief censor to the motion picture industry.
The two Harding cabinet appointees who darkened the reputation of his administration for their involvement in scandal were Harding's Senate friend, Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, the Interior Secretary, and Daugherty, who became Attorney General. Fall was a Western rancher and former miner, and was pro-development. He was opposed by conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot, who wrote, "it would have been possible to pick a worse man for Secretary of the Interior, but not altogether easy." The New York Times mocked the Daugherty appointment, stating that rather than select one of the best minds, Harding had been content "to choose merely a best friend." Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, in their volume on Harding's presidency, suggest that the appointment made sense then, since Daugherty was "a competent lawyer well-acquainted with the seamy side of politics ... a first-class political troubleshooter and someone Harding could trust."
Harding made it clear when he appointed Hughes as Secretary of State that the former justice would run foreign policy, a change from Wilson's close management of international affairs. Hughes had to work within some broad outlines; after taking office, Harding hardened his stance on the League of Nations, deciding the U.S. would not join even a scaled-down version of the League. With the Treaty of Versailles unratified by the Senate, the U.S. remained technically at war with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Peacemaking began with the Knox–Porter Resolution, declaring the U.S. at peace and reserving any rights granted under Versailles. Treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary, each containing many of the non-League provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, were ratified in 1921.
This still left the question of relations between the U.S. and the League. Hughes' State Department initially ignored communications from the League, or tried to bypass it through direct communications with member nations. By 1922, though, the U.S., through its consul in Geneva, was dealing with the League, and though the U.S. refused to participate in any meeting with political implications, it sent observers to sessions on technical and humanitarian matters.
By the time Harding took office, there were calls from foreign governments for reduction of the massive war debt owed to the United States, and the German government sought to reduce the reparations that it was required to pay. The U.S. refused to consider any multilateral settlement. Harding sought passage of a plan proposed by Mellon to give the administration broad authority to reduce war debts in negotiation, but Congress, in 1922, passed a more restrictive bill. Hughes negotiated an agreement for Britain to pay off its war debt over 62 years at low interest, effectively reducing the present value of the obligations. This agreement, approved by Congress in 1923, set a pattern for negotiations with other nations. Talks with Germany on reduction of reparations payments would result in the Dawes Plan of 1924.
A pressing issue not resolved by Wilson was the question of policy towards Bolshevik Russia. The U.S. had been among the nations that had sent troops there after the Russian Revolution. Afterwards, Wilson refused to recognize the Russian SFSR. Under Harding, Commerce Secretary Hoover, with considerable experience of Russian affairs, took the lead on policy. When famine struck Russia in 1921, Hoover had the American Relief Administration, which he had headed, negotiate with the Russians to provide aid. Soviet leaders (the U.S.S.R. was established in 1922) hoped in vain that the agreement would lead to recognition. Hoover supported trade with the Soviets, fearing U.S. companies would be frozen out of the Soviet market, but Hughes opposed this, and the matter was not resolved under Harding's presidency.
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