He was the "Return to Normalcy" guy. That’s what they teach you in high school, right? Warren G. Harding was basically the human embodiment of a collective sigh of relief after the First World War. He was handsome. He was tall. He looked like what a President was supposed to look like in 1920. But if you look at those "Best to Worst" lists historians love to publish, Harding is usually sitting right at the bottom, sandwiched between James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
But is that actually fair?
Honestly, the more you look into Harding, the more you realize he wasn't just some lazy placeholder who let his friends rob the treasury blind. Don't get me wrong—the scandals were massive. Teapot Dome is legendary for a reason. But Harding was also surprisingly progressive on race, revolutionized how the government handles money, and died just as he was starting to realize his "friends" were a bunch of crooks.
The Teapot Dome Mess and the "Ohio Gang"
You can't talk about Warren G. Harding without talking about the scandals. It's the law. Basically, Harding had this habit of appointing his buddies from Ohio—the "Ohio Gang"—to high-level positions.
Bad move.
The big one was the Teapot Dome Scandal. His Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, basically leased out federal oil reserves in Wyoming and California to private companies. In exchange? A cool $400,000 in bribes. That’s millions in today’s money. Fall became the first Cabinet member in history to go to prison.
Then you had Charles Forbes over at the Veterans’ Bureau. This guy was literally stealing medical supplies and selling them for personal profit while veterans were suffering. When Harding finally found out, he was reportedly so furious he choked Forbes against a wall in the White House.
He knew he was in over his head. He once told a journalist, "I have no trouble with my enemies... but my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
The 1921 Birmingham Speech: A Forgotten Act of Courage
Here is something they usually leave out of the textbooks. In October 1921, Harding traveled down to Birmingham, Alabama. Keep in mind, this is the Deep South in the 1920s. Segregation is the absolute law of the land. The KKK is at its peak.
Harding stood in front of a segregated crowd of 100,000 people and told them that the "race problem" was a national problem, not a Southern one. He called for equal rights in education, politics, and economics for Black Americans.
"Whether you like it or not, our democracy is a lie unless you stand for that equality."
The Black section of the crowd cheered. The white section went dead silent. For a sitting President to say that in the heart of Jim Crow territory took an insane amount of political guts. He also pushed for federal anti-lynching laws, though the Senate (shocker) blocked him. It would be decades before another President spoke that forcefully about civil rights in the South.
Why Your Bank Account Owes Him a Favor
We take the federal budget for granted now, but before Warren G. Harding, the U.S. government didn't really have a unified way to track spending. It was a chaotic mess. Cabinet members just asked Congress for money whenever they felt like it.
Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.
This created the Bureau of the Budget (now the OMB) and the General Accounting Office (GAO). For the first time, the President had to submit a single, organized budget to Congress. He brought in Charles Dawes—a guy who would later win a Nobel Peace Prize—to run it. They actually managed to cut government spending by billions and started paying down the massive debt from WWI.
If you like the idea of the government at least attempting to balance a checkbook, you can thank Harding for building the machinery to do it.
The Secret Life of "Winnie" and "Jerry"
The guy’s personal life was... complicated.
For years, people thought Nan Britton was just a "gold digger" when she wrote a tell-all book claiming Harding fathered her daughter, Elizabeth Ann. She even claimed they had trysts in a White House coat closet. The Harding family denied it for nearly a century.
Then, in 2015, DNA testing proved she was telling the truth. Harding was indeed the father.
He also had a 15-year affair with a woman named Carrie Phillips. We know this because he wrote her hundreds of incredibly steamy—and sometimes weird—love letters. He even had a nickname for his, uh, "parts." He called it "Jerry."
It’s easy to judge, but these scandals often overshadow the fact that he was actually quite popular while alive. He was a guy who liked poker, whiskey (even during Prohibition), and golf. He was relatable.
The "Strange" Death in San Francisco
Harding died suddenly in August 1923 at the age of 57. He was on a "Voyage of Understanding" tour out West. He'd been feeling sick, maybe some food poisoning from bad Alaskan seafood, or so they thought.
He died in a hotel room in San Francisco.
Because his wife, Florence, refused an autopsy and had him embalmed almost immediately, the rumor mill went into overdrive. People claimed she poisoned him to save him from the upcoming scandals. Others said it was a "stroke of apoplexy."
Modern doctors who have looked at his medical records (high blood pressure, enlarged heart, breathing issues) are pretty sure it was just a massive heart attack. The stress of the scandals breaking probably didn't help.
The Takeaway: Was He Really That Bad?
So, how should we actually view Warren G. Harding?
👉 See also: Kamala Harris Fact Check Debate: What Really Happened on the Stage
He wasn't a visionary genius like Lincoln. He wasn't a powerhouse like Teddy Roosevelt. He was a small-town newspaper guy who got promoted to his level of incompetence. He trusted the wrong people.
But he also:
- Fixed a broken federal financial system.
- Spoke truth to power regarding civil rights when it was dangerous to do so.
- Led the country out of a post-war recession into the "Roaring Twenties."
He was a deeply flawed human being who tried to be a "good fellow" in a job that requires a "great man."
If you want to dive deeper into the real Harding, skip the generic history site summaries. Check out the DNA study results from 2015 regarding his daughter, or better yet, read the transcript of his 1921 Birmingham speech. It’ll change how you see the man in the stiff collar.
The next time you see a "Worst Presidents" list, remember that history is rarely as simple as a ranking. Sometimes the guys we remember for their failures were actually busy laying the groundwork for the modern world we live in today.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs:
- Read the Primary Sources: Don't just take a textbook's word for it. Look up the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 to see how modern fiscal policy started.
- Visit the Site: If you're ever in Ohio, the Harding Presidential Sites in Marion offer a much more nuanced look at his life than you'll find online.
- Contextualize the Scandals: Compare the Teapot Dome scandal to modern political controversies. You'll find that while the technology changes, the "Ohio Gang" mentality is unfortunately a recurring theme in politics.